While I am proud of myself for birthing and catching my baby myself, thankful he was strong enough at that age to be saved, I don’t feel like I did anything super or amazing…

That’s good, Paala, because you didn’t do anything super or amazing. You did something immature and despicable. You risked your baby’s life by repeatedly defying the doctors who were working desperately to save him.

“Labor by myself with my baby, just us, and I’d birth him and catch him and then call for help.”

Early in the second trimester, Palaa’s began suffering a serious and growing placental abruption. Thus began the effort to save Palaa’s son by keeping in the womb and long as possible. That must have been very difficult for Palaa since her identity is based on her childrearing choices:

I write about my journey through motherhood as co-sleeping, babywearing, full-term breastfeeding parent to four wonderful children. We spend our days unschooling, exploring nature and all that the … area has to offer. I’m also a birth, breastfeeding, and women’s rights advocate so I post about those as well.

Simply following medical advice in an effort to save her son’s life did not offer enough scope to burnish her crunchy mom cred, so she acted like a willful toddler repeatedly defying medical advice.

…One day in December when I was 14 weeks along. I had what seemed to be an all day Braxton Hicks contraction, quite painful if anything bumped my belly, that ended in a gush of blood as I walked up my stairs at the end of the day. Bright red blood out of no where was worrisome… [W]hen the bleeding repeated itself once more the following day, I reached out to my birthy friends and took a tincture a trusted ex-midwife friend of mine suggested, drank lots of tea, and then all was fine.

Her baby freebirth was at risk!

I wasn’t able to envision a sweet home freebirth like my last one… I still hoped for the best, even as I bled occasionally. It wasn’t serious enough to warrant a trip to the hospital until I had a larger gush than usual.

She sought treatment at the hospital at 22 weeks:

I didn’t like the florescent lights, strangers that hardly made eye contact, the chilly doctor wasn’t soothing at all, didn’t put her hand on my skin, on my belly once while I was there for a couple hours, just touched me with tools and sent me to get an ultrasound. I also came during dinner time and no one offered an obviously pregnant woman anything to eat or drink. Not even a snack like they had sitting around.

She was released home and at 23 weeks and 3 days she had another “huge gush of blood,” bleeding through pad, pants and sheets and on to the mattress.

Did she go to the hospital? Of course not:

While I was in the shower, I assessed myself and considered my situation. In addition to the painful, regular contractions and bleeding, felt my cervix opening up from when I checked a few hours earlier…

I started driving to the hospital with a NICU 25 minutes away and kept tracking contractions…

When she got there:

…I told her I was 23 and 4, contracting every 2-3 minutes, they were painful, I was dilating, I was bleeding heavily, I had a SCH, I could feel the baby kicking fine, and I was there to get some labor stopping drugs. She had me fill out paperwork, put some plastic name tags on my wrist, and sat me down in a triage room and I gushed more blood, waiting to see someone. I wasn’t treated with urgency or offered any water, juice, or anything.

Imagine that! She bled for hours at home before she could be bothered to go to the hospital, showed up at 3 AM and there was no doctor to attend to her.

Everyone was so mean. [Could it be because they were incredulous at her willingness to ignore the potential death of her child?]

At 4:30am, an hour after arriving, the doctor on call finally arrived. She had a gruff beside manner, zero warmth. She shoved a couple of gloved fingers in me and confirmed what I’d been telling them, that I was dilated a couple centimeters. She said I was 80% effaced and she was going to start me on magnesium to stop labor. Oh and my baby was breech.

And then, horror of horrors, she had to put on a hospital gown.

By 6am, my husband got my message and I was given the first of two steroid shots, betamethasone, to mature my baby’s lungs in case he was born early and was started on magnesium sulfate intravenously with an IV drip to hopefully stop my labor. Thankfully, my labor slowed and then eventually stopped. The mag made me feel slow and hot…

Oh, and she got 5 units of blood!

By noon on Thursday, I was given 3 pints of blood. Apparently, I was only at 20% blood volume when I walked in. I was given 2 more pints in the next day to bring me back into the normal range… I had to fight to eat, telling them repeatedly that I was not going to have a CS at 23 weeks (my body, my baby, my choice), and I was pregnant and starving, that I needed to eat. Withholding food was unacceptable.

The next morning she woke up to a painful contraction. Did she tell anyone? No.

I went into steady labor again. I couldn’t sleep and I felt awful. I needed a shower. I wrapped up my IV and line ridden arm with a plastic bag and some tape that I found and rinsed off in the shower. I gently felt that I’d dilated another 2 cm and told my nurse so I could get started on mag again…I was given a second shot of betamethasone.

The mean people at the hospital tried to impress the seriousness of the situation on her but she didn’t get it.

The doctor on call scolded me for checking myself and told me to keep my hands out of my vagina. I’m pretty sure I gave them the “eff off” eyes because it was my body, I had made sure my hands were clean, and I knew I was more gentle with myself than they were.

Everyone continued being mean:

I continued being checked and prodded all day, all night. I had bruises on my arms for too many bad blood draw and IV attempts. I had to convince each new doctor and nurse that I didn’t want continuous fetal monitoring and I wasn’t going to have a c-section, that I could continue to eat. It was a constant fight to be listened to and left alone. It felt like it was all about control and slowly breaking me. I couldn’t believe this was standard care, that women were treated this way. Where was the respect?

I, I, me, me, my feelings, my need for control, me, me, MEEEE!!!

At this point, I asked the doctor of the day if I could eat outside because I was craving the outside world. He denied my request. I ignored the doctor’s orders on Sunday evening and went outside into the garden and ate my dinner outside before sunset with my husband.

Palaa’s baby is on the verge of viability, sure to be born early, and everyone is struggling to make sure he stays inside for as many extra hours or days possible.But Palaa found ignoring doctor’s orders to be delightfully transgressive.

So delightful that she continued defying the medical professionals:

By 8:30, I had enough. I took out my IV lines (nothing was being pumped into them at that point anyway) and my hospital bracelet. I wanted to take a shower with both arms free of junk. I figured they could put that crap back on me if it was an emergency but I needed to feel like myself again. (Did I mention they tracked and measured everything that came out of my body?)

Here’s the best part:

By 10pm, my body started going in to labor again. My husband was going to sleep and asked me if was okay. I said I just felt pushy, like I needed to poop. I blamed the start of a new round of contractions on the prune juice, them feeling like they needed to get me to poop and mess with my body. I went to the bathroom while he fell asleep on the fold out chair in the room. He was exhausted.

After a shower and sitting on the toilet a couple trying to poop, I realized I was in labor. I thought about my options as I sat in the bathroom. I’d been told my body only needed to open to 5 or 6 centimeters until my baby would come out because he was so small.

Palaa had to decide what to do.

Option 1. Call the nurses and either be prodded while birthing right there or be wheeled in for an emergency CS.

Option 2. Wake my husband and labor with him secretly but then I knew he’d lose his cool and call for help.

Option 3. Labor by myself with my baby, just us, and I’d birth him and catch him and then call for help.

Surprise! She went with the most transgressive choice!

Obviously, I went for option 3. It seemed like the safest thing for my baby and myself at the time. The studies I’d read didn’t report benefits for a c-section for babies of his age, that vaginal would have been safer, and I knew getting drugged up and controlled by strangers was going to make things dangerous for us. After a couple of painful contractions by the toilet, I laid out a couple of chux pads to catch the blood and crap I was sure was coming.

I kid you not!

My body slid Evar out, everything else, too, placenta and all in one contraction as I knelt down on the chux pads. I caught my baby boy and his bag of water broke as it hit my hands. I admired him and felt the relief of everything coming out. He looked perfect, though tiny, healthy, eyes closed but breathing, and I heard him cry.

Then she told her husband the baby had been born.

He jolted awake, ran out of the door to the nurses station at the corner to call for help. He said they were shocked and took a moment to move.

An ALS nurse came in a minute later and assessed Evar. He asked if we wanted to save him. We asked how he thought he was doing based on his professional opinion. He said he looked good and we said yes. (Babies born before 25 weeks are not saved unless the parents request it.) He milked the cord to give him more blood and then cut it. I was thankful it wasn’t too rushed but I wished he had carried the placenta up with the baby instead of cutting it…

She’s so proud of herself:

I had an unassisted freebirth, en caul just like my last baby, except in the hospital …

What about the baby?

He weighed 1 pound 6 oz, but survived. He spent four and a half months in the NICU and is doing well … no thanks to his mother who nearly killed him in her quest for bragging rights.

I think so-she’s on FB and hasn’t mentioned a death. She frequently posts pictures of her three children, one of whom is a toddler, so presumably the little one from this birth. Her FB page is exactly how you’d imagine it though-very confrontational. She has a sort of aggressive-defensive tone on mostly everything she posts (mostly about her parenting practices, which are homeschooling, ‘un-schooling’ as she calls it, leaving the kids to explore their surroundings on their own, multiple co-sleeping, minimal supervision at the beach etc)

sdsures

I doubt she’d bother mentioning it if the baby had died. That wouldn’t fit her narrative.

She says she has four children. Looks like Baby Evar might be edited out of the healthy, happy family photos since he likely has severe medical issues from his premature birth & low birth weight. … if he’s still alive.

sdsures

Is this baby still alive?

JLS

This whole thing is so, so upsetting. And so much craziness! I read a bunch of comments before posting, but not all of them, so I’m not sure if this has been pointed out already. But, one of the reasons she probably wasn’t allowed to eat was the Magnesium. I had this also, and the nurses explained to me that it basically slows everything down, so if you eat while you’re on it the food is just going to sit in your digestive system and not really move. This is bad. It’s not that they want to starve you, it’s for your safety.

I also just don’t get it. I ended up in the hospital with preterm contractions around the same time in my pregnancy (luckily I wasn’t bleeding or dilated) and I had similar interventions (magnesium, blood draws, iv’s, the steroid shot) and the whole time all I could think about was THE SAFETY OF MY BABY. Yes I wasn’t comfortable but trust me whether or not I could eat or go outside and enjoy the sunset was not a concern for me.

Oh, and I also don’t understand these natural child birth people and their obsession with not having fetal monitoring. Having the fetal heart monitor on was a bright spot in my hospital stay-it was really comforting to listen to the baby’s heartbeat.

Me too. Across the board. I gave birth to a 26-week baby a few months ago. I read this post before Spawn was born and was horrified.

I re-read it now and am gob-smacked.

She’s had massive blood loss from a partial abruption, has needed 5 units of blood so far and thinks that the medical staff can just replace her IV later if they need to?

No, sweet pea, they CAN’T if your BP has dropped too low. You pick up some nice hypoxic damage to your organs and your son’s organs and you get a cut-down entry or a central line of some kind if you are lucky. If you are not lucky, you die.

Since I had HELLP syndrome and was likely going to need a blood transfusion during the CS, I let the best RN for IV’s on the high-risk floor dig around in one of my veins on my right hand for a second IV access point. (I had a good IV in my left hand and I really didn’t want to wake up with a cut-down or central line if I could avoid it….) My only request was that she use lidocaine since that vein was really inflamed from an earlier attempt and I wasn’t sure I could hold still if it hurt much. The lidocaine helped, she was amazing and I had a second IV access point as a heplock. I kept that access point until 48 hours after the CS; Lefty – my good IV on the left – stayed with me until an hour before I went home a week later.

They are also keeping her from eating because she might need a CS for her safety or her son’s at any point. Her placenta peels off like an orange rind while she’s only dilated to 3cm and she’s off to the OR! I started vomiting during my CS. That was annoying, but I knew it wasn’t particularly dangerous because I hadn’t eaten anything in about 40 hours so I didn’t have much – if anything- to aspirate or choke on.

sdsures

I was born at 28 weeks. *preemie fistbump for your little one*

Heidi_storage

Does anyone know how this kid is doing?

sdsures

There’s an updated post above where I asked that question.

Lindsay Weiland

As an NICU nurse this story gave my hives. I pity the poor nurses that looked after that family.

Spuds McGee

Dr. Amy, I am stunned by so much that you share, but I am bawling right now. This woman is horrible. Horrible. Thank you for all that you do, thistles and all cause at some point some stuff has to stick, right? Evar deserves so much better.

carol walker

I thought this was a joke until I google. Unbelievable! She is darn lucky this child is doing so well. The sad thing is because everything turned out ok she will always think she was right in her decisions regarding the birth.

sdsures

I know. 🙁

Charlène Fortin

As a nurse I’ve had plenty of those patients, and I can only imagine the frustrated screams at the nurse station, and the extensive notes the nurses and doctors made sure to write on her behavior, because if anything had went wrong with the birth and/or the baby, she would have without a single doubt heaped all the blame on the ‘careless and rude’ staff and tried to sue.

TheArtistFormerlyKnownAsYoya

“I knew getting drugged up and controlled by strangers was going to make things dangerous for us” was the line that struck me. Like, really lady? What on earth does she imagine hospital staff are there to do, threaten her and her child’s life?

sdsures

*facedesks*

Charybdis

Sorta OT: I keep seeing Pampers Swaddlers commercials that show the baby and mother skin-to-skin. Mom is covered from the breasts down and the baby is shown being lifted onto mom’s chest with its butt covered with those ubiquitous white receiving blankets with pink and blue stripes. Thankfully the baby is clean and not covered with birth gack.

Yeah, the NCB woo is being portrayed / shown in commercials. *rolls eyes and gags*

Hilary

As the mother of a preemie with ongoing medical and developmental issues, I shudder to think of the decisions this woman will make about her son’s medical treatment going forward.

sdsures

*ex-preemie fistbump for your little one*

Bridget

This made me cry. My very good friend went into labor at 18 weeks and was hospitalized on bed rest until her little guy arrived via emergency c section at 24 weeks. He is three now and doing great. I know my friend did everything in her power to keep her baby in as long as possible. She did everything her doctors told her to do. I’m so thankful she had a great team of doctors to keep her and her baby safe

Susan

She mentions here plastic hospital bracelets at least twice. Fixating on the indignity of being labeled with a plastic bar coded bracelet instead of the sheer terror of almost losing your baby or the baby being permanently disabled. The best comment was setting up a GoFundMe to for therapy or a vacation for the nurses and doctors. That was painful to read. Truly, anyone with any insight would care more about the experience of the baby than the mother. Having cared for moms who will endure anything just to spare their babies one extra day in the NICU I like everyone else here am stunned by the self centeredness of this post. Every day she could have kept that baby in was one less totally miserable day of life for her baby. Very disturbing.

corblimeybot

I kept the plastic bracelets from my birth hospital stay and put them in my kid’s baby book. I didn’t realize they were dehumanizing shackles of oppression until NCBers told me so. [insert eyeroll here]

Azuran

Yea, my baby book still has mine.
There’s also a print of my feet. Those monster took me away from my mother’s breast in those first extremely important first few hours to take a print of my feet. Clearly this is the cause of all my ’emotional imperfections’
Hospitals birth has ruined me!!!

sdsures

Those HORRIBLE (sarcastic) plastic bracelets save lives. They’re working on making a way to scan each patient’s barcode on their bracelet so they give the right medications to the right patients.

chick pea

They didn’t offer her juice or water? What kind of monsters was she dealing with at that hospital????????

(eye roll)

Sharla

Do you jave to be so uncharitable towards this mama? At least she was in the hospital. Thank God her baby was there and doing better.

Wren

Yes, eventually she went to the hospital, then chose to deliver her extremely premature baby alone in what was potentially one of the dirtiest places she could find in the hospital to do it. She made a conscious decision to avoid the medical help that was literally seconds away and is frankly extremely lucky that they both survived. As for long term damage to the baby, that cannot be determined yet.

demodocus

She chose to give birth in the bathroom. Actively chose, not accidently ended up in. I am glad her baby is fine, but it’s not like she didn’t put the poor child under considerably more risk than she needed to. She ignored heavy bleeding for weeks.

Anon

You get it. Sadly, the sensible ones are drowned out by the crazies on this board.

corblimeybot

All those crazies who didn’t use a preemie birth as a performance art piece for their blog? If that’s crazy, I’m cool with being crazy. The sky must be a different color in your world.

corblimeybot

By the way, can you comment on the women in this comment section who are talking about their own preemies, losses, and premature labors? Do you think they’re crazies?

Because I had preterm labor at 30 weeks (thankfully, it stopped) and I took every single intervention that doctors suggested, and I think this woman is disgusting.

Platos_Redhaired_Stepchild

No, you & Sharla don’t get it: this bitch was selfish and nearly killed her kid. She likely set him up for a lifetime of disability because she wanted to show off for her facebook friends.

corblimeybot

Does it matter how uncharitable this “mama” was to her baby? How she deliberately refused assistance that could have improved his outcome, so she could get freebirthing rebel points with the internet? Does his suffering matter at all to you people?

Additionally: Does it matter that it took several people’s blood donations to bail this woman out of her own self-created mess? Does it matter that she was horrible to the hospital staff? Does anything matter other than bleating the word “mama” over and over like a mantra to try to absolve this woman of criminal idiocy and selfishness?

Roadstergal

“Does it matter that it took several people’s blood donations to bail this woman out of her own self-created mess? ”

That’s a very good point. Was this a preventable use of universal donor blood that could have gone to an accident victim?

Azuran

‘at least she was in the hospital’
And yet she did everything she could to kill that baby. That’s like saying ‘so what if she was speeding, while drunk, with kids in the car, she did it on the street in front of the hospital so they could get help when she crashed.’

Charybdis

Yes, I think so. She deserves the same callousness and disdain she showed her baby and the medical staff.

Who?

Save your sympathy for the baby, who was dragged into this mess, not the mother, who got exactly what she wanted.

e

Whaaat? Seriously? Gushing blood during a pregnancy and she was the opposite of worried? This is beyond belief!

Anon

Why do you all need to focus on the negative? Everything turned out fine for all involved. Kudos to the mom for standing up for what SHE wanted. Stop overreacting.

Megan

That’s like saying, “I drove home from the party drunk and no one died! Kudos to me for standing up for what I WANTED! People trying to take away my keys are just overreacting!”

Roadstergal

That’s like saying, “I drove home from a party drunk and hit my kid, and those damn ER docs wouldn’t give me snacks or pet me kindly while they were treating the broken bones and brain bleeds. The kid isn’t dead, I’m sure he’s fine, and I stood up for what _I_ wanted!”

David Barrus

Hey, that’s a great analogy, Megan!

LeighW

Sarcasm? Troll?

Sarcastic troll?

David Barrus

The baby has a right to survive and legally gives its implied consent. When mom or anyone acts contrary to that, they’re not acting in the best interest of the child.

Azuran

Yea people, why are you all focusing on the negative? Everything turned out fine when I was in a car accident. No one died and now I have bad-ass scars after 2 surgeries, but I’m fine now, so it’s ok. And Kudos to my dad for standing up for what HE wanted: speeding to get home earlier. Stop overreacting.

Wren

Now, if everything turns out fine (which may or may not be the case here as long term effects may not yet be seen), we are supposed to ignore the stupidity because everything was fine.

If everything doesn’t turn out fine, we are heartless for pointing out the stupidity because someone lost their baby and/or the mother or there were lifelong negative consequences.

When is it ok to try to fight for the truth being told?

Platos_Redhaired_Stepchild

Yeah, screw her kid and his welfare and health and (lack of a ) future. Mama got to brag on the internet to a bunch of randos! That truly is the only important thing to take away from this.

sdsures

Are you insane?

David Barrus

Doc, you’re my new hero! I have bookmarked your page. I’m thinking of creating a sister page – “The Skeptical Neonatologist”! Thank God for DCS in this case – this woman should have both kids taken away as she clearly cares not for her kids’ wellbeing. It’s unfortunate that you and I have to deal with these “Dr Google” knuckleheads each and every day.

AA

I would read your blog.

David Barrus

Thanks!

Roadstergal

Ditto ditto. I think the ‘follow-up’ to risky birth and breastfeeding practices is a very important topic these days.

Charybdis

What she said^^^. We would love to hear from you, either here or your own blog, if you start one.

Irène Delse

I’d definitely read your blog too.

The Bofa on the Sofa

What are the big issues that you face as a neonatologist? Pretty much the fallout from the NCB/Lactivist push? Or are there things that you face that are unique?

David Barrus

I’m not sure if you’re being antagonistic, but I’ll answer it as if it’s a serious question. May of the same issues as Dr Tuteur faces, but from a slightly different perspective as well as those that arrive long after birth. Many parents wanting to have their babies discharged home on the ventilator (breathing machine) because they’re frustrated that their extremely premature baby isn’t ready to go home on day of life 3, despite seeing that all premies do well on the Discovery Channel or feeling that they can manage the vent better than we can at home. LOTS of decisions made for the parents’ convenience or ignorance despite causing obvious harm to the babies. Soooooo frustrating! Thank God for DCS and emergency state custody!

AA

It really is too bad that the media only features “miracle babies.” Non “miracle babies” exist, too, they just don’t get featured on TV.

Given his history as a commenter, I’m fairly certain Bofa is serious in his question. I’d love to hear more from you too.

Amazed

Same here, on both counts.

The Bofa on the Sofa

Oh, no doubt, David, I love to hear from professionals here. I learn a ton from folks like you. So I ask questions.

David Barrus

Ask away! Sorry for initially doubting you. There are so many nuts on these kinds of forums that I always have to assume the worst, lol

myrewyn

David Barrus, any word on your skeptical neonatologist blog yet? I need new reading material!

David Barrus

The more I read your post, the more I’m taking it like a serious question, lol. The Baby Friendly thing is awful! I can’t count anymore how many moms come to me in tears because the hospital makes them feel like bad moms for not breastfeeding or, God forbid, they ask for a pacifier. Our hospital’s formula is under lock and key and the nurse’s have to ask management permission to give it to a mom, despite NOOOO compelling evidence that breastfeeding is better than formula feeding. For ever article the lactivists (yes, I’ve read the book, lol), I have another article that shows no difference between breastfeeding and formula feeding outcomes or, worse, that breastfeeding actually causes MORE allerigies in children. Everyone just assumes it is better and therefore doesn’t look at the unconvincing research that is out there on the subject. What’s worse, the government is on the lactivists’ side as Medicare is considering reducting hospital insurance reimbursements (and other insurance companies will immediately follow suit) based on the hospital’s breastfeeding rates.

David Barrus

The more I read your post, the more I’m taking it like a serious question, lol. The Baby Friendly thing is awful! I can’t count anymore how many moms come to me in tears because the hospital makes them feel like bad moms for not breastfeeding or, God forbid, they ask for a pacifier. Our hospital’s formula is under lock and key and the nurses have to ask management permission to give it to a mom, despite NOOOO compelling evidence that breastfeeding is better than formula feeding. For ever article the lactivists present (yes, I’ve read the book, lol), I have another article that shows no difference between breastfeeding and formula feeding outcomes or, worse, that breastfeeding actually causes MORE allerigies in children. Everyone just assumes it is better and therefore doesn’t look at the unconvincing research that is out there on the subject. What’s worse, the government is on the lactivists’ side as Medicare is considering reducting hospital insurance reimbursements (and other insurance companies will immediately follow suit) based on the hospital’s breastfeeding rates.

AA

@david_barrus:disqus, at your hospital, does formula require a physician’s order or can a nurse place an order for formula? Essentially I’m asking if a woman declines to breastfeed or has insufficient milk, must she wait for a provider to place a standing order before the baby is fed?

Also, I am sure that the founders of Fed and Best would love your input about insufficient breastmilk:

Sorry, I forgot to check back. Our standing orders (which fortunately haven’t been changed against our will) says formula or breastfeeding. But the nurses are under incredible pressure to “educate” the moms who decide against breastfeeding that breastmilk is best and frequently get “talked to” by management if they give formula without exhausting their efforts to stick to breastfeeding.

Gene

We must work in the same hospital! At least in my ED, the formula is in an unlocked drawer and any staff can access it for patient use!

mabelcruet

One of my neonatology colleagues had a complaint made against him because he’d been seeing parents who were due to have a very abnormal infant with multiple congenital abnormalities which were not survivable, so he was trying to discuss what level of intervention they wanted, whether they would want active resuscitation or comfort care, whether they wanted paed staff present at delivery or not, that sort of thing. They complained that he had been deliberately trying to upset them by telling their baby would die, and that he was trying to persuade them to give up on their child so that he wouldn’t have to bother looking after him in NICU.

Can anyone confirm that the outcome would have been different had she followed the medical recommendations? Its just that the impression I have is that the spontaneous birth was rather inevitable.

Amy Tuteur, MD

At the time she was in active labor in the bathroom, no one could have stopped it. That’s not the issue, though.

She had no prenatal care. She ignored her initial bleeding. She was first seen in the hospital around 22-23 weeks. At that point, there was a lot that could have been done to keep the baby in. At various points, she ignored medical advice that might have made a difference of days or weeks.

David Barrus

Since no one can predict the future, belinda, you know that’s not possible. However, as the good doctor has said, why in the world would this petulent woman think that bleeding profusely at home was a safe thing?

jenny

Take this the other way. She’s tremendously lucky. Even at the point of birth in the bathroom, her choice to deliver without any assistance could have gone very differently. Some 24 weeks babies are quite vigorous when they are born. But had the baby been born depressed at all, the delay in care just between the bathroom and the nurses station could have caused his death via secondary apnea. (This means a baby who is depressed will make no effort to breath. Such a baby can be resuscitated with timely initiated active breaths, but without them, the baby will reach a point where resuscitation is not possible, and will die.) And a baby who is born with active placenta bleeding is more likely to be depressed at birth.

Even being vigorous, the first few minutes of life for any baby, but especially preterm babies is so critical. They can get cold, they can lose fluid straight into the air and derange their electrolytes, to say nothing of their need for respiratory support. The wide swings in temperature, oxygenation and ventilation (blood gas status), etc, can cause brain bleeding. Normally at a delivery of a 24 weeker, everyone is poised to do everything they can to make the transition from uterine environment to the outside world as seamless and gentle as possible for the baby. The effort is made to recreate that warm, moist, dark environment as swiftly as possible while attending to respiratory and circulatory needs. That is how so many micropreemies survive now. She is incredibly lucky.

corblimeybot

Are you saying that you require proof of absolute certainty that the outcome would have been better if she had prenatal care, and if she had followed the advice of medical professionals while in labor?

I’m sure you don’t require total certainty when you make other judgement calls in your life. Most people weigh the preponderance of evidence and try to make the decision that provide the best odds. This woman repeatedly chose to make decisions that skewed toward the worst odds.

Azuran

Perhaps
she would still have a spontaneous birth at exactly the same moment
even if she had done everything the doctor recommended. But she still
chose to freebirth her extremely premature baby on a hospital bathroom
floor.

I would respect a woman’s decision, upon learning that she
was probably going to have a super premature baby, to decide no not go
through any medical intervention to prolong the pregnancy and just let
whatever happens happen. There are, after all, still very high risk of
having a baby with severe health problems.
The same way I would
respect any parent’s decision not to pursue treatment when their baby is
born at 24 weeks. Or any other parent of a severely sick newborn with
high probability of severe brain damage or with an expected poor quality of life to not pursue treatment.

But
this woman didn’t do that. She wasted precious time before seeking
help. Then she demanded treatment, yet still did everything she could
AMA, possibly lowering the effectiveness of the treatment and wasting
precious medical time and resources. And in the end, she free birthed
her baby on purpose, despite not having taken the decision not to pursue
treatment on it.

ca3799

OMG! Who would do something like that on purpose?!?!

My boy was 23.5 weeks and almost 1.5 pounds.

I was admitted at 18 weeks, and I was already was dilated to “4” with “hourglassed” membranes then. I delivered at 23.5. I’m not complaining because he’s generally healthy and has had a “good” outcome, but this is some really serious business.

My child does have “high functioning” Autsim, and has both great strengths and great weaknesses. He won’t be a “Failure to Launch” (we hope), and just a “Delayed Launch.” That is our goal.

He is the quintessential “Absent-Minded Professor” who will forget to put the milk back in the fridge, but can remember the day, date, and events that occurred when we got a new puppy… 15 years ago.

But we have been very fortunate. He was born in a facility that was able to treat such a small, “previable” infant, and he was in the approximately 5-15% of late 23-weekers that escapes “profound neurological deficit.”

He started Community College this week. I had to run up there to solve a problem with his binder today. He could not get his papers into the binder.

He also had difficulty figuring out how to buy lunch. He asked two people (Strangers. A first!), but they declined to help him, so he just copied the girl in line in front of him.

Another first!

It wasn’t food he wanted, but he did eat.

I have asked for an appointment with the Office of Disability Services, but they haven not returned my call yet.

I obtained a recent evaluation from (a major university neuro-psych evaluation center) with all his diagnoses. There were a few new diagnoses this year, as the DSM changes over time. This type of evaluation is required for education services. But of course, these types of evals are also not covered by insurance at all. Everybody likes Autistic kids, but no one cares about Autistic adults.

But, he loves math, so we hope he will find a place (of employment) in the world. I just hope that whomever is responsible for managing his bills and paperwork after we die won’t rip him off completely.

Even though he has done relatively well, he has had lots (and lots and lots) of support, lots of therapy (including some home-made therapies developed and created by mom to address particular deficits), and constant advocacy to get him where he is today. He was fortunate to be born into a family with the knowledge, means, and education to provide for his best interests.

This is not something to fool around with just because you feel the need to “go natural.” These kids have problems. Life-long problems. In a cruel world.

I wish this family the best. But that is one foolish mom.

Irène Delse

That must have been a rough ride for all involved! I’m glad your boy is finding his place in the world, and I too hope he will find the right support system once he’s on his own.

ca3799

Thank you!

Roadstergal

Wow, what a story. Your love comes through, especially your determination to make your boy as happily self-sufficient as possible, and your flexibility in working with him as he is.

ca3799

Thank you for your kind words.
Honestly, I relied on my other kids to both keep an eye on and help him duirng his public school years, and also neglected my other children to some degree because this kiddo needed so much extra. But now that all the kids are entering young adulthood, I feel it’s all worked out OK.
We are all in this together! In every sense!

If independence is the goal, young adults on the spectrum need life skills education above all else – and a degree only if it supports a specific career goal. I will illustrate why with the case of my brother. My brother and I were born 34 weeks premature, he was diagnosed with Asperger’s. He is now 30, has never had a girlfriend or steady job. He cruised through HS/community college/4-year college just fine with supports, and then kept cruising, right over a cliff. He got a history/poli sci degree because he’s a savant with dates and public figures. His executive function disabilities are serious but only vaguely detectable to strangers since he is so verbally proficient. He has tried and crashed in a few jobs. And there are few jobs in the field and he lacks the social skills and emotional regulation required in politics.

Whether autism was a result of our premature birth, or a cause, I’m not sure, but all this goes to illustrate that complications of premature birth do indeed come with serious consequences for families. I love my brother to death and appreciate his unique strengths but I know that autism has made his life more difficult.

ca3799

Thanks! I will invesitgate the book. Your story illustrates well some of the issues we are looking to resolve. I appreciate the recommendation.

GreenHarpist

Like many others here, I want so badly to punch this woman. I am currently in the hospital on bed rest trying really hard to keep my baby right where she is for as long as I can. At 22 weeks 2 days I was 3cm dilated with ruptured membranes. Today I am 25 weeks 2 days, no signs of labor, baby is doing great, and sometimes my fluid levels are almost normal despite frequent leaking (7.9 today!). And I am so grateful for the incredibly kind, competent, and cautious doctors and nurses who’ve helped me stay pregnant these last three weeks to give my kiddo a fighting chance. And my husband and I cooperated with everything even when it meant having literally all four limbs hooked to machines, even though I haven’t been further from my room than the weekly wheelchair ride downstairs for an ultrasound, even though I am not allowed to walk ten feet to the bathroom, even though I shower lying on a stretcher aided by a nurse. I will lie here for nine more weeks if my body will cooperate and baby is happy, because we desperately want her to be born as late and as big and healthy as possible. The idea that that woman could be so proud of being so reckless and so careless makes me incredibly angry.

Chi

Good luck to you and best wishes for a healthy happy little girl.

demodocus

good luck to all of you!

MI Dawn

Good luck to you and baby! May she remain inside and you remain healthy for at least a few more weeks!

momofone

Good luck to you and your baby–I hope the next nine weeks find you bored and tired of bedrest while she grows and grows. 🙂

moto_librarian

Crossing my fingers that your baby stays put! I’m so sorry that you’re going through this, and I can’t imagine how irate you must be to read about someone who had such a cavalier attitude.

Montserrat Blanco

Best wishes and good luck to you! I know how it feels (I am the proud mom of a 28weeker) and it is not nice, but I promise there is light at the end of the tunnel. You will never forget that “experience” but it does get better, I promise.

Amazed

Good luck keeping the little one in!

Roadstergal

I hope it all goes well and your little one stays put long enough to be less little!

Stephanie Rotherham

Good luck to you and your baby!

BeatriceC

Good luck! Every passing day is a good day! That’s how I managed, no matter how miserable it got.

Madtowngirl

Good luck! Hoping she stays put for as long as possible!

Fleur

Fingers tightly crossed for you and your baby!

Irène Delse

Fingers crossed! May the next nine weeks be uneventful.

amazonmom

Your’re doing a great job!

niteseer

My daughter spent 3 weeks in the hospital with ruptured membranes; on IV antibiotics, and medications to stop labor. When her veins gave out, she got a PIC line, and carried on. She bought him enough time so that when he was born at 35 weeks, he only needed IV antibiotics, and came home 10 days later. SHE is a birth warrior! YOU are a birth warrior! Mothers who fought with everything in them, to give their babies the best chances.

I will pray that you and your little one do well. Know that already, you are a heroic mother.

GreenHarpist

Thank you all for your well-wishes!

Monkey Professor for a Head

Best wishes, hope your baby keeps cooking for as long as possible!

Mishimoo

You are awesome!! Hope everything goes well and bub stays in for as long as safely possible.

Best of luck to you and your family. YOU are what a “warrior Mama” actually looks like.

sdsures

How is your baby doing these days?

GreenHarpist

Wow, thanks for asking! Born at exactly 29 weeks and in the NICU for 70 days, she came home after Thanksgiving last year and is doing very well. She’s short, may have some gross motor delay (though late walking is common in my family), and gets anemic if we’re not really on top of her iron supplement. But she’s rarely sick, her social skills are excellent, she’s happy, curious, talkative, squishably chubby, and strangers always stop me at the grocery store and park to tell me she’s gorgeous.

Ardea

These people have a script playing in their head that blinds and deafens them to reality.

Maya Markova

Yes, I am sorry for little Evar – not only is he so premature, with all risks attached, but his primary caregiver is off the wall. Good luck to him! He definitely needs it.

niteseer

Of the 15 years I worked in Mother/Baby nursing, and of the approximately 2,000 deliveries I saw and assisted, the most traumatic one I saw (for all concerned) was a woman who came in at 23 weeks, breech baby, and delivered immediately, when it was just the L&D nurses, the peds team (me and a pediatrician), and the obstetrician was still enroute to the hospital.

The baby was breech, and the tiny body slid out through the half-dilated cervix but the proportionately larger head of the premie could not fit through. And the placenta was abrupting, the mother was bleeding heavily, and the L&D nurse said the baby needed to come out NOW. This involved physical manipulation of the baby, and pulling him out. Peds don’t usually step in to do deliveries, but I take off my hat to the doctor, he handled an awful situation as well as anyone could have. The delivery was physically traumatic for the baby and for the mother, as well as emotionally devastating for her, and for the team. The baby was resuscitated, but only lived an hour or so.

This woman has NO CLUE as to what could have happened. If truth be told, she would probably have preferred to miscarry the baby at home, and have her “perfect” birth with the next baby. It was only the massive bleeding that made her go to the hospital, to save herself.

I have been in her situation, where you have a baby that is hovering on the verge of viability, and I went through every bit of pain, every bit of intervention, every bit of inconvenience, to buy him ONE MORE DAY of time to develop! I went with nothing to eat or drink, not even ice chips, for three solid days, and while that degree of thirst was painful, I didn’t waste a minute pitying myself for my discomfort……I was too worried about my baby.

It sounds as if this woman’s delivery could have been delayed quite a bit, if she had cooperated with the treatment. Whatever developmental challenges this baby may face, I have no doubt that his mother’s actions have contributed to making them worse than they might have been. God help him if he can’t get up to speed and breastfeed and develop and jump through all of the other hoops this woman requires of her babies to consider their births worth while. Poor little guy will probably always be considered her “disappointing” experience. I am sure we can expect to hear of a “healing” birth next year, that will be more up to her standards.

Empliau

You are a better person than I am. I would have pitied the ever-living heck out of myself. I think I would have done it, however – peeping pitifully, but my child is worth it. (I say I think because damn! that sounds terrible.) Mad props to you!

Allie

I have a friend who spent 6 weeks in hospital being poked and prodded and literally they suspended her legs in the air to help keep her baby in as long as they could. She had previously sustained 1 mid-term loss (about 17 weeks) and 2 late-term losses (so late that they had to have funerals). From what I understand, she had some condition that put her at high risk for placental abruption, but I didn’t want to quiz her about it, so I only know what her husband has told my husband. Whatever the cause, the last little guy is doing great. He was born about 27 weeks. She never complained that I am aware of, although she used to joke that everyone she knew who was also pregnant came to the hospital, delivered their babies, and went home while she was still there. This was actually true in several cases, although thankfully my sister-in-law gave birth about 10 days later, so she got to visit someone else for a change : )

Dr Kitty

OT:

My daughter’s current favourite TV show is the BBC show “Marrying Mum and Dad”.

Basically, the kids plan their parents’ wedding, and surprise the parents on the day.
The kids pick the theme, the outfits, the cake and the entertainment- the BBC makes it happen (obviously within a budget, but being a kids show they don’t mention that).
Lots of blended families, non traditional families and adoptive families as well as parents who just never got around to tying the knot.

There was a Dr Who themed lesbian wedding, an underwater wedding, a Spy themed Civil Partnership where the dads parachuted out of a plane, a Robin Hood themed wedding where the stepdad had to pull the rings out of a tank of snakes… It is amazing!

It cheers me up to see families who love each other, parents who are relaxed enough to let the kids go mental and kids having a ball organising a wedding. When I see stories of people like this lady and MAM, it makes me very happy to know that there are also people willing to dress up like pirates and have a sword fight on their wedding day, just to make their kids happy.

sdsures

That sounds hilarious! Might have to do that when we have kids. We joke that our rededication ceremony will be in Klingon. ^_^

MaineJen

Qua’pla!

sdsures

Make it so!

MaineJen

Coffee. Black.

Roadstergal

I’m a scientist, not an OBGYN, dammit!

Charybdis

Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.

MaineJen

…Raktajino?

Charybdis

Nope, can’t abide coffee in any form. Not even Klingon coffee.

Roadstergal

I was just telling my husband yesterday that I was highly disappointed that I never did a Picard “Engage” when we were engaged.

(Don’t know how the conversation made its way to Star Trek – I love it, he’d probably only watch it if physically strapped down.)

OMG two friends of mine, upon getting engaged, did that *first thing* on Facebook. Picard memes galore!

sdsures

Maybe we could try to get Sir Patrick to officiate?

sdsures

He will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

demodocus

Live long and prosper

swbarnes2

I think some Star Wars Celebrations had spaces set up for weddings, or at least vow exchanges.

Mrs.Katt the Cat

Our anniversary is also Halloween. So, so many possibilities . . .

BeatriceC

Oh! Can I help plan a themed anniversary party? I used to throw these enormous Halloween parties when I lived in Florida and it was my favorite part of the whole year.

Mrs.Katt the Cat

Yes, I wanted a masquerade for the wedding but we ended up going small and cozy with pumpkins everywhere. By far my favorite holiday, in a house of Christmas crazies LOL. We were looking for a day in the fall and I half joked that I would have an excuse to wear my wedding dress one full day if it was Halloween. Bride themed costumes planned out for years.

Erin

I got married in June (7 brides for 7 brothers was my favourite movie when I was younger) but Halloween would have been better.

Mrs.Katt the Cat

Caused more than a few raised eyebrows on both sides of the family. We’re the ‘grey sheep’ couple; )

BeatriceC

(In case you get the notice, I fat fingered the downvote button while trying to hit the upvote button. I hope it’s fixed now. )

Mrs.Katt the Cat

I’ve done that a few times. Also, MiniKatt will kick the tablet and do weird things, no worries.

BeatriceC

In this morning’s case is was velcro bird upset that I was surfing the web instead of staring lovingly into her eyes while she perched on my knee.

Charybdis

You have some sort of nerve, trying to pull that type of shenanigans! ;P

Would she rather a doctor or nurse do a cervical check/vaginal exam WITHOUT those mean, nasty gloves?

Roadstergal

Only if they squirt breastmilk on their hands first.

sdsures

Oh, well then!

Anna

What keeps surprising me about these folks is the fact that they can’t tolerate the SLIGHTEST discomfort. How does she put up with colicks, teething, toddler tantrums? And what if she can’t get snacks alone at home with her baby all day? How does a person THAT impatient and self-centered deal with all these little annoying things that present themselves daily in every mom’s life… Unless she is a Kardashian with full-time servants. But I guess she is not. She wants to appear oh so fragile and sensitive but only comes across as an asshole.

sdsures

Oh, don’t you remember? The baby is an afterthought. To hell with raising it and keeping it alive.

MaineJen

She “unschools” (translation: They all do whatever the hell they want all day, so she doesn’t have to be bothered with them)

sdsures

I’ve never understood that. My mom and dad were both teachers, as was my father-in-law. Mom and father-in-law still living. I was raised with a work ethic and I hope to pass some of it on to my future children.

MaineJen

I too come from a pair of teachers. I don’t think “work ethic” is in this woman’s vocabulary.

sdsures

Doesn’t mean I didn’t hate some aspect of school (yech, math! I’m a languages geek, and speak French and Russian fluently.) but I still knew it was my freaking job to finish my homework every night.

MI Dawn

Well, I took a look at her blog…her kids aren’t that old. The oldest is 7, I guess (based on her post that the c/s for breech was in 2009. Her other daughter looks to be 4-5, and her son is about 2-3. I have no trouble with basic unschooling (reading, math, writing based on interests, trips, TV shows) for a 7 year old. I honestly think we push kids faster than they are ready to go in the US, then wonder why we have so many kids with problems. I will be more worried when she is 10 or so.

However, based on her writing…I have many other concerns.

Old Lady

And not fast enough for others. My son started reading at 2 and a half and I’m concerned about him for Kindergarten. Unless you are average across the board school struggles to accommodate you. Assuming it tries at all.
On her blog I was more weirded out by her letting her children run around naked in the woods. It seems wildly innapropriate to me, especially after, say, three. Her whole blog reads like some Blue Lagoon fantasy.

Amazed

Yeah, there is this. The discomfort. I have no arms to speak of after just two days of taking care of Auntie’s (Not So) Little Treasure. She’s breaking her first tooth, she was ill recently AND colics are back. Guess what? There were no snacks alone for me. No sitting down to eat at all because holding her while seated was NOT a thing. She knew and she howled her head off. Hell, even going to the bathroom under the sound of her screams was a luxury. AND I can’t use my hands for long yet which means I can’t do my freaking job which is – surprise! – using them. And that’s just two days of that baby stuff.

Having a baby-toddler-kid is a lot of job. And it certainly includes inconveniences. i am always surprised when snacks come first, though. Not having them.

In the light of a recent discussion here, I have to remind everyone that in good ole days starving WAS a thing. It was all natural. Funny how nature isn’t this good when it’s natural mom’s face that can’t get stuffed in time. Somehow, a baby’s tummy is never THIS important. Somehow, it’s acceptable for a baby to go starving because BREASTMILK IS BEST! And somehow, intentionally starving a baby to convince him that self-weaning is NOT a thing is to be commended.

WTF?

Maya Markova

Actually they tolerate a lot of discomfort, and very severe pain, as long as it is not near those damn doctors and nurses.
It must have been quite painful and exhausting for this woman to sit crouched, losing blood, catching this blood, and also fecal matter, until the baby came.
Reminds me of the proverbial Spartan boy who was so anxious to keep a stolen fox hidden that allegedly let the fox disembowel him. Wrong priorities.

Irène Delse

Good point. It’s the whole “warrior mama” mentality.

sdsures

That was the hardest post I’ve ever had to read. I’m an ex-preemie of 28 weeks. What is WRONG with this woman???

She blogs under Paa.la . I don’t believe she is Finnish, but who knows?

Inmara

I just looked in there and saw the post where she’s breastfeeding in friend’s pool. Yeah, right, she’s insisting that law allows her to do it even in public pools. Helloo, sharing your bodily fluids with everyone and getting that not-so-pristine water in your (preemie) baby!

Yeah, yeah, I picked up on that – but she’s crossed the line from “hobby, annoying to other people, not dangerous” to “hobby, risking disease transmission.”

So, I think it’s time for a new hobby. I’m doing my research in Sustainable Agriculture. There’s plenty of room for her to be a crazily annoying anti-GMO proponent or local food foodie without risking her kids’ health.

guest

I have to wonder, though – would you also want any breastfeeding mother to avoid public pools? (Although I thought she was at a friend’s house, and if so, that’s a private pool.) A lot of women leak breastmilk. Most don’t wash their breasts after each feeding. So there are traces of breast milk on lactating women’s bodies much of the time and I’ve never heard it suggested that breastfeeding women should not go in pools.

BeatriceC

Actually, I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of a newborn around a pool because of all the chemicals used to treat the water. Even the fumes are strong enough sometimes to make me uncomfortable, and I’m an adult. Additionally, competitive and professional swimmers have higher rates of asthma than non-swimmers, possibly due to exposure to harsh pool chemicals. On top of all that, the Aug. 1st issue of Chemical and Engineering News (a reputable journal), published a review of several studies pointing to additional risk factors in public pools (by-products of the disinfection process seem to create risks of their own). I can’t find a link that’s not behind a paywall, or I’d link to it. All that to say this: I wouldn’t expose a newborn to a chlorinated pool, either my own or a public pool.

Charybdis

Aren’t salt water pools the big thing now?

BeatriceC

They are becoming more popular, but they come with their own set of risks.

guest

But I didn’t comment about the baby being in the pool, only the idea that it’s unsanitary for trace amounts of breast milk to get into a pool. I think that’s just lactophobia.

Azuran

I have nothing against breastfeeding mothers using a public pool, or breastfeeding around it. But breastfeeding ‘in’ a public pool just seems weird and unpractical, basically something you would do just to brag about it and defy anyone to give you a look.

guest

I also think it’s impractical, but I am questioning whether it is a health hazard. Let’s imagine that Paala was swimming with her toddler in a friend’s private pool, and the baby woke and wanted feeding. Maybe it’s not all that weird that someone handed her the baby so she didn’t have to get out for a quick feed. Think of it more as a “in the privacy of your own home” situation than a public pool – is it really all that weird? Inmara called the photo “sharing your bodily fluids with everyone,” which seems pretty close to saying breastfeeding women should stay out of public places because they might leak breastmilk on someone.

Of course, posting photos of yourself breastfeeding everywhere you go is annoying. A baby in a pool without a swim diaper is also annoying (but, if I’m remembering correctly and it’s a private pool, that’s their business). A one month adjusted infant in the pool – I don’t know. I’ll let a medical professional comment on whether that’s safe or not.

Azuran

I don’t know about health risks.
But It’d think there is some risk of
the baby getting a wave in it’s face and aspirating water. Or if the
mother looses her balance, slip or fall, the baby is going to end up in
the water.
I don’t see any intelligent reason to breastfeed inside of a pool.

Meh. I can see why you’d maybe be tempted to do so once or twice just to brag that you’d done so.

Amazed

I’d certainly want all babies to avoid public pools that are not specifically designed for babies. First, the water is treated with chemicals which might be a bad idea for the baby. And second, the thought of having contact with anyone’s shits or urine does not appeal to me. The fact that this someone is a baby doesn’t make much change. Babies cannot be expected to control themselves the way adults are.

Breastfeeding mothers in a pool? No big deal. Breastfeeding in a pool? Never had much patience for showoffs who want to make themselves all important and victimized. Can’t imagine brave mommy couldn’t take a minute to leave the water and breastfeed nearby.

Inmara

I don’t think that breastmilk leaking in water is the worst that could happen, what’s more disturbing that whatever happens to be in pool water will get in baby’s mouth if mom doesn’t shower/wipe her breasts after being in the pool (and the point of her post, IMHO, was that she wants to nurse while being in the water).

Kerlyssa

What. A baby young enough to be breastfed in a pool is a hazard all by theirself. Incontinence. Yuck.

Empliau

I just kind of hoped she was Finnish. She could have had parents who wanted a unique name, but I could also see her changing Paula to make it fit her personality. Which it is not really fair to find annoying – I have supported lots of friends who changed their names to one that suited them better. I realize that I’m kind of hair-trigger on my contempt for her.

attitude devant

Evar is Finnish….

Maya Markova

If she is Finnish, then she is anomalous among Finns in her contempt for formal education. (They are proud of their schools, and rightly so.)

Erin

I must admit I have a little sympathy for her. Whilst her section experience bears little resemblance to mine, I can understand those feelings she reports and it’s certainly made it hard for me to trust Doctors. I’d like to think I wouldn’t make the same decisions she did but in my more anxious triggered moments I can’t be sure.

On the other hand, she makes me scream with rage. No wonder I struggled to get help at first when I was finding it hard to tell people why I was traumatised by the birth of a healthy baby…if there are women out there claiming that elective sections where no one came close to dying, where no one passed out, relived being raped, thought that their baby had died and that they were being fobbed off with one of those dolls they give teenagers to stop them getting pregnant are traumatic.

Empliau

I had Kaiser for many years, and Kaiser is relatively low cost. Since it’s the internet, even though I am not a doctor and have no qualifications, I’m going to opine anyway – I’m guessing that with a primip who is breech, they’re not going to offer a vaginal birth. I think (and would welcome corrections) that untried pelvis is a thing to think about, vis-a-vis head entrapment, and undoubtedly other risks as well (cord?). Why would they offer her something with a greater risk profile? Also, I don’t think she says whether she was frank breech or footling breech, which again I have read makes a difference. And finally, she seems to hate hospitals, their personnel, policies, and procedures, inclusive. I wouldn’t believe her if she told me she was a carbon-based life form.

Empliau

And when I say offer, I mean offer in the sense of suggest. Anyone who refuses a section, which you can do at Kaiser, will get a vaginal birth.

sdsures

Is Kaiser your child’s name or an insurance company. Asking because I’m Canadian-British, so I’m not knowledgeable about American insurance stuff.

Empliau

Kaiser is a big Health Maintenance Organization, (HMO) in the US – as close to single-payer as we have. Everything is covered at a reasonable price as long as Kaiser chooses to cover it. For example, some infertility treatment was covered, but IVF wasn’t. Doctors are on salary. L&D is staffed by whoever is on that shift. It was great for us at the time. Now in a state with no Kaiser, it can really suck when you need an expensive test NOW, and no one can tell you whether your insurance will cover it or not. It has many flaws, but is at least not-for-profit (she said bitterly, having seen photos of health insurance company CEO mansions paid for by denying care to policyholders.

sdsures

Thanks!

If I’d been born in the US, I wouldn’t be alive today. My prematurity caused a lot of health issues, some easy to fix, others not. Prematurity is really a lottery: some late term preemies can be very sick, and some micropreemies can do amazingly well.

Roadstergal

It’s an HMO that has its own little insurance thing going on – so you pay an insurance premium to them, and in-network is only Kaiser facilities and out-of-network is not covered. It’s super-focused on “Wellness!” and “Natural!” and the like.

My husband had Kaiser before we got together, and they were the kings of ‘take an aspirin and walk it off.’ In his case, years with an undiagnosed torn labrum.

Empliau

Although maybe I should have named my kid Kaiser. It’s been one of those days (weeks, months….) Keyser Söze? Kaiser Lupowitz? Missed opportunities …

“I wouldn’t believe her if she told me she was a carbon-based life form.”

BWAHAHAHAHA! Science!!!

Chi

I’m pretty sure she’s not a primip. In the first few lines of her post she says that;

“I write about my journey through motherhood as co-sleeping, babywearing, full-term breastfeeding parent to four wonderful children. We spend our days unschooling, exploring nature and all that the … area has to offer. I’m also a birth, breastfeeding, and women’s rights advocate so I post about those as well.”

So I’m not sure if this baby is number 4 or number 5. I think it’s number 4.

Either way, she fails to recognize that she was putting her baby in MORE danger through her actions than the doctors and nurses at the hospital. If they wanted to deliver via c-section, it was probably for a very good reason, like giving that poor 24 weeker the best chance of being born viable with a minimum of problems (like becoming blind from lack of oxygen via labor or even brain damage).

She’s a fucking narcissist whose entire identity is wrapped up in her crunchy, breastfeeding, baby-wearing lifestyle, so anything that threatened that had to be prevented at all costs!!!

Even if that cost was her unborn child. I just don’t understand why she even went to the fucking hospital if she was going to ignore the doctors and fight them about EVERYTHING.

Empliau

Sorry, I was unclear – she has a post about her first child’s birth, and how Kaiser’s saying that her choices for her breech fetus were 1) scheduled Caesarian and 2) labor for a while, then have an emergency Caesarian, ruined her life. She summons the waaaahmbulance: They *totes* didn’t inform her that breech birth is safe! She had a section because they misinformed her! Because trust birth! Excuse me while I pound my head (gently).

Chi

Ah I didn’t read much of her blog. I couldn’t stomach that much stupid in one dose.

Melaniexxxx

in that post AGAIn she focuses on the most mundane, bizarre shit – much like complaining about no “snacks” when she was haemorrhaging in ED, she talks about that MAGAZINES she read in the waiting room that were ‘adequate’

like…. wtf lady

Irène Delse

Yeah, some people just make it worse for everybody. The hospital staff must have being on raw nerves all that time, and I pity the other families who had the bad luck to be there at the time.

Erin

Unfortunately I suspect that comment could also apply to me at the moment.

I know at least one member of staff would like to “shake some sense” into me.

Chi

The difference is you have a history of trauma, therefore you being difficult is at least moderately understandable.

She doesn’t have any excuse. She did what she want, when she wanted with no regards to WHY medical staff were doing the things they did and certainly with no regard to that poor baby.

Erin

To her though, she does have an excuse. It’s exactly the same as mine. She states in one of her posts that she had PTSD after her section.

What’s the difference? I’m making choices the hospital don’t approve of and that potentially do have risks. I’m being difficult and a total pain in the ass in many ways because I’m also refusing help. I don’t want to talk about my issues or what they could do to try and make it better for me so I just shut down any conversations like that. I don’t want to discuss why I feel I don’t deserve a better experience this time around or how I feel that holding my baby straight away would be unfair on my son because I might turn into a certain blogger preferring one child to the other. I’m essentially using emotional blackmail to shut them down because as one male Doctor said he can’t argue with rape trauma without running the risk that someone (not necessarily me, more likely a midwife) would complain and he’s right…one of the midwives has already complained about something one of the registrars said to me at my first appointment. I was asked if it upset me, I said no because whilst it did, I can understand why she said it and it didn’t get taken any further but it’s made junior Doctors/nurses/midwives at least treat me as if I’m made of glass.

(Having a bad day. I think posts like hers hit a nerve because if I had either a little less sense or a little more faith in my body, I could easily be making similar choices.I know lots of women have good section experiences but I don’t think I can explain how revolting, violating and repulsive I find the idea. Pre pregnancy I came down on the side of it’s worth it to get the second child I wanted to complete our family and put maternity hospitals firmly behind us…now it’s becoming this terrifying insurmountable monster growing arms and legs at a frightening right.)

Heidi_storage

We don’t see you making insufferable blog posts celebrating your transgressiveness. You’re trying to do the best you can considering your history and current state of health (mind and body), and you’re not treating the whole dang thing like a piece of performance art. Internet stranger is hoping for the best for you and your baby!

KeeperOfTheBooks

I haven’t had anything like your experience, only an unpleasant runaround with PPD both times. (Well, three, if you count the minor case after the early miscarriage.) However, something that I’ve found helpful in the last week or so might help you, too: the thought that this won’t last forever, you will start feeling better, and that in the future–maybe in 10 months, maybe in 10 years–the pain and unhappiness will have faded some. It won’t all magically go away, but it will. get. better. Just hang in there.

moto_librarian

Erin, you understand that you might be not be dealing with your situation in the best way, which is a level of self-reflection that this woman does not have. You are not in a place where you can talk about your trauma in therapy, which is probably no more pleasant for you than for your caregivers. Not to pry, but are you on any medications for PPD and PTSD? I certainly did not have trauma like yours, but I simply could not face the things that were bothering me the most in therapy until I was on the right medication (I tried four before I found the right one). I truly hope that things will start to get better for you. I value your presence in this group of commenters.

Irène Delse

To her though, she does have an excuse. It’s exactly the same as mine. She states in one of her posts that she had PTSD after her section.

So she says, but she also started her post by making clear where her priorities were: her sense of self as a free-birthing, unschooling, perfect organic crunchy mama. She only went to the hospital to save her life, that much is obvious. Without this dire emergency, she probably would have avoided the hospital as the plague, and if her baby had died after being born in her bathroom at 24 weeks, she would have chalked it up as “some babies are not meant to live, let’s have a healing birth next time”.

Also, I’d just like to point out to many of the RBE/PBE people, their kid is medically exempt. Nope.

Empliau

Erin, she is nothing like you. She was disappointed to have a section, but didn’t realize she had PTSD for years, until her homebirth midwife showed her what she’d been missing. Eye goop — oh, noes! A half-hour wait for skin to skin — oh, the humanity! Seriously, I think if she’d had PTSD she would not have needed to wait two years to feel anything but the vague dissatisfaction (they didn’t cherish and fuss over a new mother! I think we all can imagine the level of cherishing she would demand.)

She is nothing like you. You were traumatized. She was not treated like a bloody birth goddess princess. There is no comparison.

Irène Delse

But as Chi said below, you have a history of trauma. And what you’ve been asking for doesn’t result in disproportionate risk. It’s one thing to be edgy when you’re nervous, and another to insist on dangerous stuff, like eating when you may well have a surgery in the next hours, or taking out one’s lines and going AWOL.

Charybdis

They have lost their right to want to “shake some sense into you”, what with all they did before and put you through. You aren’t dictating what you want to do about a premature labor and trying to keep a very premature baby inside you for as long as possible and then fighting the medical staff over Every Little Thing.

You are adamant that you want things to go a certain way because of your past trauma and insisting on certain things (general anesthetic, maternal request CS) that are NOT out-of-the-ballpark weird. Not typical or usual, but certainly NOT unheard of nor unfounded.

Your headspace is more along the lines of “This terrible, horrible awfully traumatic thing happened to me (rape) and during my labor (with your FIRST child, so you had no frame of reference) I was allowed to labor for 81 hours before a CS was suggested/recommended because Midwives and Vaginal Birth. The CS used an epidural or spinal anesthesia which made me unable to move my lower body and I felt trapped which put me back to how I felt during the rape. The anesthesiologist, trying to be comforting and reassuring, stroked my hair which made me panic more and remember/relive the rape. All of these things pushed me to the brink of suicide, which was also not really noticed or dealt with by those who were supposed to be caring for me and my baby.” This is an unfortunate and unforeseen consequence/result of the rape and YOU DIDN”T KNOW HOW DELIVERING A BABY WOULD AFFECT YOU, BECAUSE YOU HAD NEVER DONE IT BEFORE. Now you do, and advocating for yourself to be one of the “exceptions to the rule of midwife/vaginal birth” because of the whole shooting match is okay.

You were also not recording things like the picture of the bloody bathroom where you delivered your 24 week “en caul” baby alone IN A HOSPITAL. Without waking/telling your husband so he could get help or calling for help yourself, then getting pissy because they took the baby away to NICU before you could do skin-to-skin and/or breastfeed. You did NOT ignore dangerous bleeding and nearly bleed out yourself before getting yourself to the hospital, not waking or telling ANYONE you were going and then try to dictate your treatment “I’m here for the labor stopping drugs”. You were not complaining about the un-spa-like atmosphere. You were not ripping out your IV’s and sneaking food/snacks from the refrigerator.

Contrived issues do not trump real issues, nor should they be measured with the same stick. I am betting that those involved in your care are probably shocked and saddened by how you were treated when it finally came to light and are willing to work with you to make your next experience less traumatic/re-triggering for you. Her, not so much.

There’s really no comparison.

BeatriceC

Your situation and this woman’s situation are entirely different. A similar difference from my field would be how I would feel about a student who’s not getting their work done because they want everything to go exactly how they think it should be, regardless of anything else, and pitches a fit when they can’t have things their way, vs the student who can’t get work done because they have to take care of younger siblings when they get home, have absent parents, parents who speak no English or are uneducated themselves and can’t help, or have medical issues that prevent them from actually doing the work. One student just wants to be a prince/princess and the other student faces real obstacles. My student with real issues? I’m going to bend over backwards to help him/her achieve success, even if it looks a little or a lot different from what the rest of the class is doing. My student that wants to be a princess? Yeah, they get a zero and I have no sympathy at all.

You have real obstacles. She’s making excuses. Her first birth wasn’t perfect. So what? Life is messy. When the normal messes happen, you build a bridge and get the hell over it. You don’t throw a toddler-esque tantrum and defy medical advise and reason. You had some really, truly horrific things happen. You’re not whining and crying and going “oh, pity me!”, you’re building that bridge. You’re seeking out medically sound alternatives that will allow you do do what you need to do safely for both you and baby. That’s an enormous difference.

Kali Blaze

I’m trying to say this as gently as possible, because I do have a lot of respect for educators.

Please be careful deciding that one of your students is a prince/princess. In high school, I was driven to a suicide attempt that way. If one of my friends hadn’t called to ask me to help her with her French homework, I don’t know if I would have been successful or caused permanent damage to myself; as it was, the timing of that call may have saved my life.

I’m sure I seemed like a princess. At least 3 standard deviations above average in intelligence. Family was comfortably middle class. Only my dad was emotionally abusive (though I couldn’t articulate this until my mid-20s, because everyone on that side of the family yells and I really didn’t understand that it wasn’t normal until it stopped; he expected automatic obedience and agreement and took disagreement or disobedience, even forgetting to do things, as a direct and deliberate challenge to his authority. But because he was a cordial, genial man with a sense of humor to everyone else, including other people’s children, no one had the faintest idea), and I had undiagnosed bipolar and a genetic connective tissue disorder. My parents pulled me out of public schools and sent me to a private school in 8th grade because socially I was being eaten alive, but they didn’t feel they could tell me that so I understood it to be a punishment for not getting good enough grades. The private school I was sent to, I was even more severely bullied and when I asked the administration to do something, the principal reassured me that my primary tormentor was a nice boy who surely would not do that intentionally and so he would say he was sorry and it would be all better. Naturally, he only became more brazen after that. High school, I went to an all-girl’s high school largely because of the promise of camaraderie that seemed very warm and friendly and supposedly very challenging academics. Except that my mother wouldn’t let me test out in more than one subject (I don’t remember if it was my parents or me that chose math; I should have been testing for placement in every subject). I was bored and miserable in all of my other classes because the work wasn’t anything resembling challenging and I could ace the quizzes and tests without doing any of the homework. That got me mediocre grades (high-90s test averages, much lower homework averages because I hated the senseless busywork – there is no real critical thinking required by most of the questions in the textbook or the worksheets the textbook companies produce). My parents and my teachers could all see that my grades were not reflecting my intelligence, so everyone was leaning on me about how I was…how did they put it? Not living up to my potential. I developed severe asthma and migraines that resisted treatment. Still more pressure. I snapped and took a whole bottle of pills.

I wasn’t being a princess, I was being put under more and more severe pressure to be something I wasn’t and never have been – mindlessly obedient. It very literally came near to killing me, between the asthma attacks and the suicide attempt.

That was half a lifetime ago, and still just describing this to you has made me feel sick.

If my teachers had asked me then what was wrong, all I could have told them was that everyone was leaning on me to do mindless, senseless ‘work’ that didn’t teach me anything and seemed to lack any point beyond obedience. So I’m sure to them, I was just a princess.

MaineJen

Why the hell is she so obsessed with eating? “I’ll take your magnesium drip and your *five units* of blood, but don’t you dare try to tell me I can’t be shoving food in my maw every second I’m here!!1! Contractions at 24 weeks and gushes of blood do not concern me, but god forbid I suffer the slightest amount of physical discomfort. Let me rip out my IV and check my own cervix with my own ‘clean’ hand, but don’t you dare try to tell me I can’t have a sandwich.”

I’m sorry. I just can’t get over this one.

Heidi

She seemed to think some food, which she insulted anyway, would do a lot for her major blood loss. I don’t think you can lose that much blood, eat some red meat, and be a-okay.

Mattie

it’s likely though that losing that much blood would make you feel weak and tired…also feelings you experience when you haven’t eaten enough/have low blood sugar. She couldn’t seem to make the connection between her feeling crap and the blood loss, so her brain made an easier connection “I need food” which she then fixated on. Ridiculous but also unsurprising

Heidi

I have hypoglycemic episodes occasionally myself. I’ve snapped and panicked, but I can’t imagine afterwards thinking what I did in that moment was admirable and bragging about it online.

Mattie

Haha no! I have (recently diagnosed) POTS, which is made significantly worse by having hot baths (lol wish I’d known that was the reason hot baths made me feel gross for the last 10 years). I don’t tend to get out of the bath and then blog about how amazing and natural the heart palpitations and nausea and dizziness is. Also, now I know, I’ll have less hot baths.

Jennifer

I was diagnosed with pots 10 years ago. Not fun.

sdsures

I have hypoglycemia. It’s dangerous because it can make me too tired to fix myself something healthy to eat. 🙁

Mattie

stick a chocolate bar in your body to grant you enough time to eat something healthy 🙂 and give yourself a break if you don’t always eat healthily

sdsures

I always have a Snickers on hand. 🙂

attitude devant

Actually, this is a common NCB thing. “How can X happen to me? My diet is excellent!” They believe in diet and exercise as the key to health. You got cancer? Try wheatgrass! You have arteriosclerosis? This herb will scour your plaque away! In this case, it’s all “How do they expect me to get better if they’re starving me???”

Erin

It seems to be a common theme. I’ve seen lots of women essentially cite it as an intervention. Evil Doctors starved me in labour so I needed a section type thing.

Personally pain kills my appetite which no doubt explains where I went wrong. If only I’d eaten something he would have descended.

mabelcruet

I ashamed to admit my first thought was ‘I hope to god that every member of staff who went near that woman wrote extensive, detailed, contemporaneous notes, properly signed and dated them and got a witness to sign for those times they tried to beat some sense into this stupid, selfish woman’s head’.

When the baby turns out to have learning difficulties or movement disorders, the first thing this fierce mama will do is blame those mean people who tried to starve her in hospital.

Heidi

I hope they bring up her little bloggie as evidence.

Mattie

it appears she has removed the post

Roadstergal

I hope it was captured. And sent to the hospital.

Platos_Redhaired_Stepchild

I hope so too.

Empliau

Luckily she wrote it all herself. And months after his birth, so she can’t say that she made bad decisions based on altered mental state from blood loss or what-have-you. She is still, months later, proud of her decisions.

I am somewhat amused by her rampage against Kaiser in her CS post. Since Kaiser has binding arbitration, she will get nowhere …

Roadstergal

And Kaiser, in my experience, is very nacheral/hands-off/heal thyself…

sdsures

Hope so, in case she sues them or something.

Gayla Ber

Ugh! This makes me ragey.

I had twins. At 33 weeks, I was sent to hospital because there were concerns of twin to twin transfusion. I got bored so hubby and I wandered around the maternity ward for an hour or so. When I was told that the possible c-section would not be performed, and the dinner hour had passed, meaning I hadn’t eaten all day in anticipation of the possible section, I asked if I could go down to the cafeteria to eat. It wasn’t until then they mentioned I was supposed to be on bedrest (I’d only passed the nurses’ station a half a dozen times while wandering around out of boredom. LOL!!). I asked if I could use a wheelchair and that they were ok with. Why did I not just go down anyway? Because I wanted what was best for my babies!! If they had said no, I would have asked my hubby to go down to the cafeteria and bring me some dinner in my room. Thankfully, because I wasn’t in active labour, and because I was really just waiting on a decision and even the nurses weren’t sure why I was supposed to be on bedrest, they let me go downstairs in a wheelchair.

CSN0116

The picture that she took of herself eating dinner outside and smugging it up to the camera makes me want to throat punch her. I have never wanted to obliterate someone’s fucking face so badly as looking at her in that photo >:-O

Right? I was a in-hospital tutor for a teenage girl who was on bed-rest starting at 22 weeks gestation to try and prevent any more cervical shortening. During the hospital stay, she struggled to gain weight on top of that. At the end of one of our sessions, the hospital dinner was delivered. Due to some kind of clerical reading error, she received about a half-a-cup of canned peaches and nothing else. A few minutes before, her main support person called and told the girl that the support person was not going to be able to make it tonight because the support person had blown out her knee in a fluke accident.

I asked the kid if the kitchen was going to send her more food. She replied, “Yes, at about 8pm.” I told her that I needed to go to Taco Bell to grab some dinner before going to a church meeting and I could easily bring her back a meal. She demurred. I (being my mother’s child) replied that she could tell me what she wanted from the Taco Bell menu OR I would bring back one of everything on the menu plus two of each desserts. She placed a Taco Bell order and we had a nice dinner in her room.

Note that the 16-year-old had a better grasp on priorities in life than this woman…..

Stephanie Rotherham

I am no longer judging teen mothers after reading this post. I didn’t do much anyway, but I think a fifteen year old that doesn’t understand birth control is probably going to be a better parent than this bint.

BeatriceC

And her original refusal probably had more to do with her being embarrassed/afraid to ask for/accept help, not anything to do with trying to be some martyr.

BeatriceC

I was thinking about this last night as I was cleaning up a mess in my living room. You see, the mess was made by Charlotte the macaw because she was having a temper tantrum. I’d put her back in her cage for night night because macaws need 12 hours or so of sleep, but she didn’t want to go to sleep. Her response was to throw food and bits of chewed up wood at me. Then I thought about her reaction to going to the vet. She tried to escape more than once and even bit the crap out of the vet’s finger (job hazard for an avian vet). Next I thought about the time she didn’t want to go to MrC, but had to because I needed both hands for something, and she stared him dead in the eye with a petulant look that would make a toddler proud and pooped all over his feet. This woman’s behavior reminds me of Charlotte’s behavior. But Charlotte is a bird without as much higher cognition as humans (I won’t say without any, because birds certainly have more intelligence than we give them credit for). This sort of behavior; caring only by herself and throwing tantrums is something we expect out of toddlers (and parrots), not out of adult humans. And I’d bet anything if I had a male scarlet and they had babies, Charlotte would quit caring about these little things and single mindedly protect her eggs and hatchlings, which is more than this woman did.

CSN0116

Has this disorder been properly named and placed in the DSM? Because NCB-ers, like this woman, share common symptoms, and think and behave very similar. It’s pretty easy to draw a circle around it all.

Surely somebody is on this…

Platos_Redhaired_Stepchild

Seems like they all have some form of Munchausen syndrome by proxy. They risk their babies lives so they can play martyr.

Roadstergal

This is just one tiny little nugget amidst such a massive shitshow, but – “I’m also a birth, breastfeeding, and women’s rights advocate so I post about those as well.” And yet, she ‘unschools.’ Formal education is a critical part of advancing women’s rights worldwide.

CSN0116

ALL the breast feeding shit she posts about! Ew! In what world that matters but safe birth of a 24 weeker doesn’t…

But they’re HER boobs so they bring HER adoration and attention, so they matter.

swbarnes2

Doctor’s advice, book learning…if it’s good for other people, it’s not good enough for her and hers.

KeeperOfTheBooks

Quite. I was actually thinking about this the other day in relation to my daughter. Now that I’m a parent, I have a different perspective on a lot of the abuse and neglect that my parents perpetuated on me. I can understand, if still be furious about, some of it a bit better now, but the education thing actually makes me angrier than the hitting and shouting and perversion of religion. Half-assed homeschooling for the first 10 years of my education very nearly guaranteed that I’d never escape that house (except possibly into an abusive marriage). Much though I’d like to, I can’t wave a magic wand and make sure my daughter has an easier life than I did. I can, however, do my damnedest to give her the tools to take care of herself and not have to rely on crazy people, and I suspect that will have a much greater positive impact on her life than how she came into this world or ate during her first year.

sdsures

My stepfather was abusive.

I’m terrified that I’ll screw up my own kids.

Sean Jungian

I don’t worry about screwing up my kid – I know that I’ll screw him up somehow. My goal has always been to get him to an adulthood that will require only a minimum of therapy (versus my 10+ years of it).

demodocus

yours will be fine too.

Chant de la Mer

I got a head start on the adult therapy and just had him start it as a teenager, so hopefully we have gotten all his therapy needs out of the way!

Sean Jungian

Mine has had a run of it in the 4th grade when he had to learn how to cope with his school anxiety. I have anxiety issues myself but it helped a lot to have an outside person talk to him about it and for him to see that therapy isn’t any big deal, just another tool to help you when you need it.

sdsures

Good for you!

Kelly

If you are terrified of screwing them up, you will be fine. It is those who think they are the best parents ever that will screw their kids up.

demodocus

What Kelly said. My parents both grew up with abusive parents and they managed to break the cycle

KeeperOfTheBooks

Same here. Though to be fair, I suspect any halfway-decent parent, abusive background or not, has that fear.
Thinking more about it all last night, it occurred to me that I’m supposed to show these helpless, often trying and difficult little people unconditional love when I’ve never experienced it myself. How?!

Who?

I don’t know about being ‘supposed’ to do anything. That feels like a slippery slope.

The best thing you can do for your children I think is love them as they are: not unconditionally exactly, but without expectation. Just because they are themselves, and because you can. Some days it’s an effort of will, not emotion, and that’s okay too. Constancy is a great symbol of love.

You’re not perfect, and neither are they. And thank goodness! ‘Good enough’ is just fine.

sdsures

I’d appreciate any advice. We should start a Facebook group!

KeeperOfTheBooks

I wish I could!! I’d love to pick the brains of the other parents on here. Sadly, my parents are sufficiently nuts that I don’t ever mention the kids on FB, or even that I *have* them. (Went no-contact years ago, pre-kids.)

sdsures

Know the feeling. My grandparents were nuts. My MIL is less nuts, but she unfriended and blocked me because she is woo and I’m not.

Mishimoo

For me, I take how my parents act/react and do the exact opposite (within reason). It’s working out so far, but it does take a lot of thinking and patience.

KeeperOfTheBooks

I do something similar in a lot of situations.

sdsures

We should form a Facebook group: “Abuse Survivors Scared to Death of Parenting”

IMHO, unschooling and anti-vaxx are both methods for parents to avoid some of the unpleasant duties of parenting. Getting shots for children is not fun so reasons are invented to explain why their special snowflake doesn’t need shots. Sending children off to school can be emotionally painful for parents, but planning lessons in 5 subjects for all of the kids is so hard which lead directly to unschooling.

Lots of benefits for the parents; avoidance of minor discomforts for the kids at the risk of massive dangers to the kids…..

sdsures

“IMHO, unschooling and anti-vaxx are both methods for parents to avoid some of the unpleasant duties of parenting.”

I agree. But since I’m not a parent yet, I can only judge it from having studied psychology and adolescent development in uni.

EmbraceYourInnerCrone

How is un-schooling supposed to work? How do the kids learn anything(Maths? Geography? History? Grammer?) I suppose one could learn the basics of arithmetic and reading from things like Sesame Street and the like, but then what?

I have to say one of the things her high school taught my daughter that she will use forever is critical thinking skills. “Everybody knows” was not good enough, she had to learn to back up her answers with facts, proof , citations. I don’t see how NOT teaching your kids anything is going to help them cope with the big wide world (or maybe that’s the point? keeo them ignorant and they will be afraid to ever leave?)

swbarnes2

I suppose the way it’s supposed to go is you get your kid the soundtrack to “Hamilton” and they like it, and so the decide that they want to learn all about the Revolutionary War on their own. So you do museums, get books, watch documentaries, read the Federalist papers, but its all kid-directed. Probably works for that topic so long as the adults know where to get good information, for instance, that David Barton is NOT an acceptable source. I suppose that ideally, the kid learns a lot in short intensive sessions, as they jump from topic to topic, soaking up this subject and that subject. Sounds like a good way to make a kid who thinks they are superior to the adults around them because they, say, know more about Roman history than anyone else they know.

And of course, it’s just the premise of the movement that all kids will naturally want to learn all kinds of stuff with no structure. That’s probably not true, and I doubt many of these parents are willing to say “Bobby doesn’t have the right temperament to make this work, at least not now, we need something with more structure”

And if your kid doesn’t want to learn math, and the parents have no desire or inclination to teach it? Sounds like the unschooling answer is you just don’t do math.

MaineJen

I can imagine that working for a *very specific* type of child, one who is quite introverted and self-motivated, has a lot of internal discipline and maturity.

Your average kid? Would just play XBox and watch TV all day.

swbarnes2

I could see making a deal with my kid where she can play Civ, but also has to keep track of leaders, where they lived, when they lived, fit them all into one map, and one timeline, and write a report about each of them and their civilization.

BeatriceC

That’s where the guide has to do a lot of work. The kid is interested in “Hamilton”? Pack everybody up and go visit Revolutionary War museums. Have the kid go on a web quest to find out more information about the events leading up to the revolutionary war. Do projects involving making candles or doing housework the way people had to do it in those times. Live for an hour without electricity. Springboard that into science, and how electricity works. Read novels set in the era or primary literature. Look at amounts of money things cost as stated in the novels or primary literature. Springboard that into an economics lesson. For that to make sense you have to do some math. It’s a “one thing leads to another” kind of process, and the guide has to be creative and knowledgable enough to pull the lessons from practically anything. I can do it with math and a lot of the basic sciences, but the rest I needed help.

Elizabeth A

…or you put the soundtrack to Hamilton on in the car, and have a blast with Guns and Ships, but then one day you get stuck in traffic and have a loooong talk with your children about adultery and blackmail and when it’s all over, you all agree that yes you would like to listen to the 5 year old Taylor Swift album from someone’s backpack, pass it on up!

The other long-term problem I see is that the kid will miss the survey-style classes that kids in schools and most home-school programs get. Why did the US break away from England? How had the different beliefs between the two countries come about in the first place? Why did England agree to a treaty with the USA during the War of 1812 when England was doing pretty well in the war?

Most home-school kids and unschoolers will pick up some basic biology by being alive. How about physics and chemistry?

Kali Blaze

Looking back at my school experience, I so wish I could have done something like unschooling, or at least Montessori schools. But I do agree that it really takes a kid who has a thirst to know things to have unschooling really work as child-led. (I started picking up and reading Discover magazine around age 8, and was ferociously curious and loved to read, so I think I would have been a good candidate if I didn’t have parents who worked full-time jobs.)

BeatriceC

The concept of unschooling is actually sound, but it’s not easy to pull off. Somebody this weekend said something about using the term as it’s understood now instead of using it’s actual definition. I disagree. I think educators should be speaking out about its misuse and not allow lazy parents to abuse the term. This is similar to when the science community unites behind fundamentalist christians misusing the word “theory” to justify not accepting the theory of evolution.

Now, that part of my rant over, unschooling is an educational theory where the educational guide picks up interest cues from the child and gives the child a well-rounded education through the topics that child is interested in. The theory is the child will learn more and retain more if the material is presented through activities the child enjoys.

The guide’s job is two-fold. One, they need to be able to spot the learning opportunities in any situation and use them. Second, they need to be able to expose the child to enough different things to spark enough interest to actually have enough opportunities to get those topics taught. This is actually difficult and time consuming, and the guide must be extremely knowledgable about a wide range of subjects in order to pull it off. I’m extremely well educated and eve I had to call for backup for some things during those short times when I used this type of schooling for my own kids (temporary situations where there weren’t any better alternatives).

demodocus

I don’t doubt that very few parents have the wherewithal to do it well, either.

BeatriceC

I could never keep it up for more than the few weeks is intended on doing so, and I’m pretty good at turning almost anything into a learning opportunity.

Sean Jungian

And I always have to kind of cock a skeptical eyebrow at that kind of reasoning. Granted, getting my kid his shots was momentarily distressing. But it’s not like he cried forever over it, they were over & done and forgotten in minutes. Minutes! Who can’t tolerate something like that? How closely are you identifying your child with yourself where you can’t stand for them to experience even a fleeting moment of discomfort in exchange for significant protection throughout life?

Same with school. I almost think it plays into whatever borderline personality disorder some of them must have – can’t stand to have their captive attention source away from them for any length of time. Along with preventing any kind of critical thinking or questioning of beliefs. Argh.

MaineJen

I mean…”I made sure my hands were clean”

Are you for real, lady? Do you believe in germ theory and everything?

guest

Her hands were clean, but medical staff wear gloves!

sdsures

MEANIE GLOVES!

Mattie

tbh out of everything she did that’s like the least nutty thing, it’s her clean hands in her own vagina, with a baby whose waters still hadn’t gone. Definitely not sensible, or even vaguely a ‘good idea’ but if she wants to stick her own hands up there, she’s entitled to do it.

Chi

Yes but she was still BLEEDING which meant there was an open wound somewhere which means that she could’ve got a uterine infection (seeing as it was her placenta that was pulling away) which could’ve lead to sepsis and death. The baby would probably have been fine since he was still in the amniotic sac, but she was still posing an unacceptable risk to herself.

MaineJen

Oh my GOD

Charybdis

If she was so opposed to medical intervention, why did she go to the hospital in the first place? If she knew she was going to fight them on Every. Little. Thing., then why even go? Getting annoyed because they, the MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS, aren’t going to listen to your personal “diagnosis” and immediately hop to with your “drugs to stop labor” request is just about as loathsome, narcissistic, and demanding as you can get.

I’m really surprised she didn’t just walk away AMA.

But seriously, why do these “NCB, freebirthing, pregnancy is not a disease” type folks ALWAYS run to the doctors when things go sideways? It’s a real question, I would genuinely like to know why the ones who defiantly reject anything medical when it comes to pregnancy and giving birth (prenatal care, GD screening, OB/CNM care, fetal monitoring, pre-e monitoring, heplocks, etc) go running to the doctors when shit goes sideways. If they weren’t deemed “necessary” all during your pregnancy, then why do you suddenly have All The Faith/Confidence in them when there are complications like pre-term labor, PPH, retained placenta, stuck baby, etc?

*waits patiently for coherent answer*

MI Dawn

I suspect her husband gave her an ultimatum, based on her “3 choices” she lists later.

moto_librarian

That or she was afraid that she was going to die. The amount of blood that she lost had to be causing her severe physical and mental symptoms. How often do we read about home birthers who get themselves checked out at the hospital but not their babies?

Charybdis

But sometimes mothers just die because of pregnancy/childbirth, just like babies do. It’s part of the NCB creed. So if they are willing to accept the “sometimes babies die” and “babies die in hospitals, too” BS, then they should be willing to accept that “sometimes mothers die too”.

moto_librarian

Funny how babies are disposable but they themselves are not…

MI Dawn

True, dat. NCB moms never can die. It’s OK if the babies do, though.

Roadstergal

They can always make more. It’s like when you bake a cake, and it comes out wrong – throw it out and make another. *barf*

Remember that woman who had a uterine rupture at home, and was planning on another baby at home?

Melaniexxxx

Ahhh. the healing cake re-bake after burnt cake syndrome

corblimeybot

When these NCB mothers feel the primeval internal panic of impending death, they do a completely natural thing. They seek help from other people.

When their soon-to-be-born child might be in danger, they don’t seek help for that child. They’re uninterested in whether their child experiences an infantile version of that mortal terror. They’re almost solipsistic, in that regard. If they can’t physically feel mortality looming, it must not be that important. They’re only driven by their own feelings.

Caveat that some of these women are so indoctrinated that even ignore their own mortality.

Montserrat Blanco

Feeling so sick that you think you are going to die is the most upsetting thing I have ever experienced. I ended up at a ICU, so yes, I was pretty ill. At that point either you accept death or you seek help. You know you have no other option. You feel it. You feel you are dying. I can not describe it with words but death is a sure thing at that point, you feel it is going to happen for sure.

BeatriceC

I was there only once, when they were rushing me to an OR to deliver YK. It’s not a pleasant feeling at all. And even then all I could think about was “do what you want with me, I don’t care. Save the baby.”

momofone

My guess is that it’s because of her husband. She knew he’d “lose his cool” and insist that she stay if she tried to leave, or worse, call for help himself. What a jerk, wanting her and their baby to be ok, and being willing to use the resources available to make that happen.

sdsures

Does “lose his cool” in her lingo translate as, “Behave like a freaking sane person scared to death about the birth of his extremely premature baby and run down the ward hall, screaming for nurses and doctors to come and help”?

Empliau

Yes.

BeatriceC

She mentioned that she’d sought medical help in the days and weeks prior. I’m fairly certain that she ignored medical advise those times, and if I recall correctly, she said she’d been hospitalized and discharged, which stands a good chance of being an AMA self discharge, based on the rest of her behavior.

sdsures

“But seriously, why do these “NCB, freebirthing, pregnancy is not a disease” type folks ALWAYS run to the doctors when things go sideways?”

Self-preservation?

Kelly

I feel like these people just want to throw it in the doctor’s face that they were right and that they didn’t need them. At the same time, that is an expensive way to go about it.

BeatriceC

Perhaps she was right in the sense that nobody died, but there’s a good chance that her actions made the baby sicker than he had to be. Of course we don’t have the ability to go back and see what the alternate universe would have looked like if she’d gotten proper care earlier, and then actually followed the doctor’s instructions, but I’d venture a guess they could have kept him in for another few days at least, if not another few weeks, and the baby would have suffered less.

guest

This seriously reads like a parody of NCB.

And I wonder, now that the child is born and likely has continuing complex medical needs, is she going to give him proper medical treatment, or continue to put his life at risk because she “did her research”?

Krystle Dolbow

Wtf this hits way too close to home and makes me sick. My daughter was born at 23w1d from cervical incompetence (after a rescue cerclage and 5 days on hospital bed rest in the trendlenburg position with tons of meds, including magnesium, to stop labor) I had a csection because she was frank breech and was too dangerous for her to be born vaginally and I lost her 4 hours after birth. Because of that csection (classical incision) I can only have csections from now on due to the extremely high risk of rupture. How the fuck can this chick live with herself? ! Makes me fucking sick. I’d give anything to have my daughter. I did every single thing that I could to keep her inside, as well as the doctors. I accepted every intervention. I did what the doctors thought was best and I never questioned them. Even when I was told that I had to have a classical incision and wouldn’t be able to ever have a vaginal birth again (my first pregnancy, my son, was born vaginally but stillborn at 20w3d due to placental abruption caused by antiphospholipid antibody syndrome which I had no clue that I had). I didn’t care. All I wanted was my daughter to be safe and alive. After her health, and body, was failing, I told them to remove all machines, etc so that my fiance, Grandmom, aunt and I can hold her during her last moments. She lived for about an hour with no medical help. I wish I could spit in this bitches face. The more I think of it, the more angry I get. Ugh. Thank you, Dr. Amy, for all that you do.

demodocus

i’m sorry for your losses

Stephanie Rotherham

I’m sorry for your losses; I’m glad you have a child now.

Amy

I am so sorry for your losses.

Roadstergal

Oh god, what you and yours went through! I’m so sorry.

momofone

I am so sorry for the losses of your son and daughter.

Montserrat Blanco

I am so sorry for your losses. I am lost for words.

BeatriceC

Hugs. I’m so sorry.

MI Dawn

So sorry. Sending hugs.

Sarah

I hope you’re ok. I’m glad you chose to tell us about all of your babies.

Heidi

I’m so sorry about the loss of your two babies. It’s beyond heartbreaking.

KeeperOfTheBooks

Upvoted for support, obviously, not for the hell you all went through. I’m so sorry.

Irène Delse

Ditto. You’re very brave.

sdsures

I’m so sorry.

Tigger_the_Wing

I’m so very sorry for your losses. That is heartbreaking.

I’m so very glad that you have your son, and wish both of you long, healthy and happy lives.

Mom of 3

This story is the perfect example of why hospital reimbursement based on patient satisfaction is a fucking terrible idea.

sdsures

Yeah, seriously!!!

Gene

I joke my satisfaction scores would be through the roof if I gave everyone narcotics and antibiotics. But I honestly care nothing about my satisfaction scores. I never even read the comments. Because if I’ve pissed you off, I don’t care. I only care that I’ve improved your health.

Mom of 3

You sound like my kind of doc 🙂 Hopefully the system will come around to rewarding good medical care rather than whether the patients are “happy” with it. Sadly, it doesn’t seem like that will happen anytime soon.

Anon

Thank goodness that most doctors care about patient happiness in addition to making people better because you sound like quite the asshole & I’d rather die than be treated by you.

Well, if you want a ingratiating doc who provides inferior or inappropriate care that leads to your death, feel free. That’s what AMA forms are for.

demodocus

“. It seemed like the safest thing for my baby and myself at the time”
My toddler thinks it’s safe to lean on our 2nd floor window screens. Seems safe to him. Those of us who know more about the world know better.

evilhrlady

I fell out of a second story window when I was three–because I didn’t want to take a nap and thought going out the window was the best way to escape.

Broke my head. You can still feel where the bones grew back together. So, I can tell your toddler from experience that this is not the best idea.

Tigger_the_Wing

My husband got pushed out of a second storey bedroom window by his little sister – fortunately, the house was built into the side of a hill and the fall, onto the sloping lawn, wasn’t as great as it might have been.

Stephanie Rotherham

I once hit my older brother in the head with a plank when I was a toddler. You can still feel a dent.

I can say with experience it’s a bad idea to hit people in the head with planks.

Charybdis

I got hit in the head, right under my left eyebrow with a garden hoe. Still have the scar and my eyebrow grows a little strange around the scar.

Swinging garden tools with abandon when you are 6-7 years old is a Bad Idea.

MI Dawn

So is throwing rocks into the woods, as my brother learned. Siblings like me can run out in front of you with no warning and the rock will hit them hard in the head…

BeatriceC

Licking the cigarette lighter in your car is also a bad idea (if you have a car that still has one of those). I found this out the hard way when I was about 2. It was traumatic enough that I vividly recall the scene to this day.

Monkey Professor for a Head

When I was a kid, my parents were worried that I would climb the shelves, so my dad started to take them down. While he was doing that, I ran into the now exposed shelf bracket and split my forehead open. I still have the scar.

At least that’s what my parents told me. Im just hoping that a dark wizard won’t come back to finish me off.

evilhrlady

As long as you’re living with your horrible aunt and uncle you’re good. If you’ve moved out, better watch out!

guest

We live on the fourth floor and therefore have window guards on all windows (except the fire escape and tiny, high bathroom window). My kids think it’s fun to climb onto the windowsill and jump onto the bed and it still makes me scream in fear.

Dr Kitty

Honestly, I wonder if she was surprised he was born alive at all.
Maybe she figured if he wasn’t going to survive, she could just give birth in the bathroom and no harm would be done, because he “wasn’t meant” to survive.

Because deciding to deliver a micropreemie alone in a bathroom when you could have had the neonatal team in the room as you delivered is about maintaining control over the situation, not about your child’s best interest.

I hope there was a moment when she realised he was breathing and alive when she realised that delaying resuscitation for her birth experience was a bad choice.

lawyer jane

I think this is a good possible explanation. Or that her mental state was so out of whack due to blood loss and medications that she just was not in touch with reality. The blog post is her attempt to fix the cognitive dissonance.

sdsures

But what about the husband? He must be completely wrecked.

BeatriceC

I’d love to hear what her husband has to say, because there’s some hints in her narrative that he didn’t approve at all of her choices. But I’m going to guess he doesn’t want to air his family’s dirty laundry and we’ll never find out unless it becomes a nasty custody battle and the news picks it up.

Kelly

Why does he keep having kids with her? If I pulled crap like this, my husband would already have a vasectomy and I am not sure if we would be married either.

BeatriceC

Perhaps he didn’t realize the extent of the crazy until this pregnancy. He probably does buy into a lot of the NCB crap himself, but the last couple births seemed to have gone reasonably well, so I can see where he might actually start to believe some of that stuff, but then realize she’s gone off the deep end with this pregnancy. I’m not defending him, but I can construct a sequence of events that could cause him to keep having kids with her up until this point. And I can also see him not wanting to rock the boat because mothers have to pretty much kill somebody to not get custody of their kids in the event of a divorce.

Kelly

That does make sense. I always want to meet their husbands and see what kind of people they are. Those that I know in real life, tend to bow down to whatever their wives want but tend to be really nice and well educated.

corblimeybot

Among NCB couples I know, the husbands have one major thing in common: They are very happy to abdicate all responsibility about pregnancy, childbirth, and babycare to their wives. They aren’t henpecked men whose harpy wives bullied them into NCB. They’re totally on board because their wife’s obsession with NCB means they have virtually no responsiblities. They are not victims, they are participants.

Typically, they don’t do a lot of thinking about NCB itself. They just decide that’s woman’s stuff that she should be thinking about. I do know a dad or two who is chest-deep in NCB, but there is always that tone of misogyny and “women’s work” to their endorsement. Sometimes it’s very blatant and abusive, other times it’s subtle and condescending.

The biggest NCB dad of my acquaintance was thrilled when his wife abandoned her master’s degree and her hard-earned career to be his little baby-producing housewife. The most mild NCB dad of my acquaintance viewed his wife’s fixation on NCB as an excuse for him to be completely useless as a father, because parenting is HER job according to NCB.

corblimeybot

It must have been a hell of a thing. She spent that process patting herself on the back for rebelling against those evil nurses and doctors. She sure showed them, delivering a barely viable baby in a hospital bathroom. Except then she got to see firsthand what she had done to her child. Then she had to go back to her NCB wasp nest and spin it all in the most ~*inspirational*~ way possible.

I agree with lawyer jane; the cognitive dissonance must have nearly shattered her skull.

Empliau

But even if that were the case, given that the baby was breech, how is it better to have head entrapment, which seems a very real possibility? I understand wanting to make the best of an impossible situation, but seriously, having a baby stuck neither in nor out, even a tiny one, seems horrible. And I certainly wouldn’t want those to be my baby’s last moments.

I can understand comfort care for a baby that can’t survive, but her decision-making process defies any kind of analysis, even after-the-fact rationalization.

sdsures

Or if god forbid he died, if she birthed him alone, then she might not be blamed? Because it’s ALL ABOUT HER.

Monkey Professor for a Head

I’ve attended three (adult) cardiac arrests in bathrooms. It’s really fecking difficult – you have no room, no equipment at hand, it just throws everything into chaos. To imagine someone actually deliberately engineering that situation- it just beggars belief!

Mattie

I guess at least it’s easy to ‘whisk off’ a micropreemie to a suitable place for live saving treatment compared to an adult in cardiac arrest in an inconvenient location.

Monkey Professor for a Head

Definitely. With an adult you pretty much have to grab them by the legs and drag them out of the bathroom.

The most “interesting” location I’ve ever seen a cardiac arrest was the back seat of a car. That guy was simultaneously the unluckiest and luckiest guy in the world. I mean, having a cardiac arrest sucks, but he was lucky enough to have one while sitting in his car outside an emergency department waiting for someone else. He survived.

Roadstergal

The one time I’ve been hit by a car on my motorcycle, I was leaving work at the lab that was attached to a hospital. I flew over the hood of the car and slid until the emergency department curbing stopped me. I got up and walked in. :p

Dr Kitty

I know of one person who tried to commit suicide by jumping off a motorway overpass…and landed on the hood of a consultant neurosurgeon’s car.

Which I think is the universe telling you that it isn’t your time to go.

PrimaryCareDoc

What I would give to have been a fly on the wall in the nurses’ station…

sdsures

*agreeing snort*

attitude devant

Am I reading correctly that she was upset they didn’t leave the placenta attached?

moto_librarian

Yes, you are. Unfortunately.

sdsures

Priorities, man.

Jennifer

I have a feeling Paala doesn’t respect “my body, my baby, my choice” for women who want elective c-sections or to formula feed.

Melaniexxxx

Also… WHY the fuck is ignoring everything the midwives and doctors recommend for her just great because they are all MEAN nasty cold assholes trying to starve her who know nothing…. but then suddenly when bub is born their assessment that baby ‘looks good’ is trustworthy enough for her to make a decision about palliative care or active treatment on in seconds?

MI Dawn

Because it doesn’t matter about the baby. They can be mean, nasty assholes to the baby, she doesn’t care. It’s only when it has to do with HER that it’s important.

Note: I do not believe they were mean and nasty. Stressed and frustrated, I CAN believe. She must have been incredibly hard to care for with professionalism.

Heidi_storage

Frankly, anything short of punching her in the mouth counts as extreme kindness and courtesy, given her attitude.

MI Dawn

Dr Amy, where on earth do you find these stories, and how can you read them without pulling all your hair out and screaming at the top of your lungs? I can’t even IMAGINE this. The sheer narcissism of this woman, and the utter lack of caring about the baby is appalling. She was probably a horrible patient for the hospital staff to care for, and I bet her reviews of everyone talked about how mean and horrible they were, and they wouldn’t let her go out to restaurants to eat.

I’m sure there were no kind words, either, for the NICU staff who worked their tails off to keep her baby alive and healthy for the 4.5 months it was there.

Kelly

I thought about that too. I bet those nurses hated her but loved her poor baby. I don’t know how they deal with very sick babies and then have to have the patience for some of their very stupid parents.

Melaniexxxx

Um, they were ‘measuring everything coming out of you’ because you ALMOST BLED TO DEATH. Your kidneys were likely in acute failure. Not to ‘control’ you. Pee is informative. Of course it was hard to put in cannulas. Ripping them out and then coding in the shower when your vessels dilate in the warm water is NOT going to be healthy for your already oxygen deplete baby.

My god.

SNACKS THO. JUICE.

MI Dawn

The last time I gave a patient ANY blood was someone who was bleeding out (the pt I mentioned in a previous post, who ended up with a hysterectomy). The fact this woman got 5 units? Holy crap. She has no freakin’ clue. I bet she gets all her medical knowledge from old TV shows.

demodocus

and not that shatner 911 one or even St elsewhere, more like the flintstones

MI Dawn

And yes, St Elsewhere was what I was thinking of!

demodocus

General Hospital

MI Dawn

Nope, that one I almost NEVER watched (I did see Luke and Laura’s wedding, only because it was on every TV in the sorority house and dorm. My mom watched it.

demodocus

i never watched any of them, lol

Irène Delse

That’s true, she’s lucky to be alive and non brain-damaged herself… What a train wreck.

Sarah S

Yup. When I hemorrhaged I had 2 freaking catheters (one for urine, one vaginal) and they were starting to draw blood from my knuckles because there was nowhere else. I thought I was going to die up until I woke up from surgery. Although it does mess with one’s head a bit. My hospital only practiced rooming in so my baby lived at the nurse station while I was getting attended to. My biggest worry once I was awake was that he’d been given formula while I was under. (I laugh about it now…)

Dr Kitty

The thing about eating?
When you think you might need to perform surgery on someone, you generally don’t feed them or give them juice.

Even if she had declined a CS for the baby, if she had a PPH, uterine rupture or a retained placenta she could have needed lifesaving surgery herself.

I’m sure the the staff were thrilled she had dinner outside- because I can guess they were all concerned about her having a major bleed or delivering her baby in the garden.

If you come to hospital having lost 70% of your blood volume then no, you won’t be an easy stick for lines. If you ASK the nurses, they’ll unhook and cap your lines so you can shower, or give you a bed bath.

Collapsing and bleeding alone in the shower, with no one to call for help and no IV access in place if help arrived was a real possibility.

The standard of care would have been bed rest, CFM, doing as little as possible to irritate the uterus and cervix further and telling the staff if you have further bleeding or anything that might be contractions, so that can act on it ASAP. She was throwing up roadblocks to everything designed to give her baby the best chance of survival and prevent her losing more blood or having an infection.

Chi

And yet they were being ‘cold’ and mean for just wanting to do their jobs.

Her narcissism is truly breathtaking. All I can hear throughout that post is ‘me me me! I want I want I want’ like a toddler throwing a tantrum.

I really really really hate these ‘mamas’ who think their mommy instincts trump an actual medical degree. Goes for all home/freebirthers and anti-vaxxers.

If she truly believed that much in her ideology she shouldn’t have gone to the hospital. I suspect her husband probably was the one to convince her to go in from her comment about how he’d probably cave and call for help.

The staff was also being cold and mean for not sitting around for a hour with their hands on her stomach while offering comforting words and drinks.

See, her birthy friends had plenty of time to sit around rubbing her tummy and offering food because that was the complete extent of their skill set. Left to their devices, she and her son would be dead.

The doctors and other medical professionals didn’t have time for that because they were too busy actually saving lives.

Dr Kitty

Does she not get that when many people are deeply UNCOMFORTABLE being touched by strangers, it isn’t really appropriate for health care providers to pat and rub patients?

She felt like they weren’t caring for her boo hoo.
But if Drs actually hugged and patted patients, not only would we make the majority of people really uncomfortable, we might trigger and traumatise a minority and would doubtless end up in front of a disciplinary panel sooner rather than later.

Patients who hug me or shake my hand- if they initiate it, I’m ok with it.
I might occasionally touch someone’s hand if I’m giving them a tissue while they cry.
I don’t hug or pat otherwise.
Because it would be deeply unprofessional.

guest

I would have been so pissed off if doctors and nurses I had never met before were hugging and patting me at the hospital. I’m pretty much a no-touching person all the time, unless you are a loved one of mine, but in labor I hated being touched even more. I had a doula who tried to do some counterpressure stuff to relieve my pain, and I had to ask her to stop. And, of course, she ASKED first and we discussed and tried them out before labor. But it felt worse to have hands on me, not better.

Chi

I get REALLY antsy if people touch me without permission.

It was worse when I was pregnant because people seemed to think that because I was pregnant it gave them license to touch my stomach.

I REALLY needed one of those ‘touch the bump, lose a hand’ shirts.

Kelly

My doctor asked before she hugged me. She had gotten to know me by now. Also, if she wanted her stomach to be patted or touched, ask your husband.

Heidi_storage

So basically, she was incredibly lucky that neither she nor the baby died from her idiotic and selfish decisions. Well, I’m glad they both made it, but I really hope she gets a clue as to how to behave like a decent human being sometime soon.

Azuran

Probably not going to happen. Since they both turned out fine, it’s obviously thanks to her and because she knew what she was doing. In her mind, she sure showed those stupid medical professional how birth should be handled.

The Bofa on the Sofa

Since they both turned out fine,

Yeah, aside from spending 4 months in the NICU, the baby was perfectly fine.

Sounds like a drunk driver who comes home and crashes through the garage. But hey, they fixed the car and the garage, and he didn’t get a DUI and go to jail, so, you know, everything turned out fine!

Just goes to show you that drunk driving is a-ok!

Roadstergal

Honestly, with a preemie, I wonder if it’s “I got a DUI, but I just did community service and a short jail stint and it’s all fine.” The problems crop up later…

demodocus

but only broke the kids’ bikes!

T.

Kid is at high risk for brain damage I fear…

sdsures

Yes, unfortunately. Bleeding in the brain is a big fear, also NEC at that age.

T.

There is a calculator somewhere in the internet… At 24 weeks with these data the kid had about 60% chances of major or moderate brain damage :(((

She doesn’t sound like somebody who could manage a medically complicate child…

sdsures

24 weeks, you’re looking at a 50% chance of survival. Not good quality of life, but MERE SURVIVAL. (Sorry for the caps. This needs italics.)

sdsures

Side note: my sister has 6 year old twins, a boy and a girl. They were born technically a month early, weighing between 5 and 6 pounds each. We were told that this was pretty good for twins.

In the earlier years, they monitored the boy for hydrocephalus, by measuring his head. Both of them turned out fine. 🙂

As a result of my prematurity, I have CP and hydrocephalus.

BeatriceC

My 24 weeker has some mild issues that didn’t make themselves evident for years. While therapy has made those issues essentially non-existant, they still crop up from time to time. Chaos and crowded public spaces are difficult for him, even now, though he’s a hell of a lot better than he was when he was a preschooler. Thankfully he has no real health issues related to the prematurity. It could have been very, very different.

moto_librarian

I remember my first postpartum shower after my pph. It was two days after I gave birth, and I was only just to the point where I could be out of a wheelchair. My husband had to stand next to the shower and hold my hand to steady me. I still had my I.V. in should I need blood. I cannot get over how reckless and cavalier she was, not only about her baby, but about her own health.

lawyer jane

Do you think there’s any truth to her suggestion that the prune juice kick started her labor?

MI Dawn

It’s possible, because an irritable bowel can cause uterine contractions, and she was already at risk for them. What puzzles me is that she even was *given* prune juice. We would never have given it to an “at-risk” patient, so I’m wondering if she just got it herself.

BeatriceC

I was wondering if they offered a stool softener and she decided she would use the prune juice instead because “natural”, and the nurses and doctors okayed it only because she wasn’t giving them any other choice.

MI Dawn

I don’t know. I’ll have to try and read the whole post when I get home and see if she was given the prune juice or just took it (or ordered it on her meal list) and the nurses weren’t aware of it.

BeatriceC

She hedged around the issue if I recall correctly, not saying outright how exactly she got it.

MI Dawn

Ah. Which says to me that she may have asked for it and was denied by the staff, but got it anyway (in all my hospitals, we always had little things of juice in a fridge for patients to have. While they were supposed to request the staff to get it for them, it wasn’t uncommon for family members to raid the fridge for juice (for the patient and for themselves/children)

BeatriceC

I’ve spent enough time in hospitals with the boys to know that you speak the truth. Only the boys’ current children’s hospital has any sort of control over the patient/family fridge. The nurses have to get stuff out of it for you (and put it in if you bring stuff for yourself).

I’m imagining a scenario where they tried to get her to take a gentle stool softener, she declined, they impressed upon her the importance of not getting constipated, she still declined and asked about prune juice, they told her no or just a small amount, and she proceeded to ignore them, just like she did with everything else.

Empliau

In the book Karen, the mother gets up in the night to get her daughter a drink from the hospital fridge. There’s something wrong about the container (she’s tired and not so sharp) but she takes another look, and it’s labeled “Fluid from Mrs. X’s thoracic cavity.” Before she gave it to her daughter, thank goodness!

Charybdis

Ahh, the good old days when you didn’t have to separate biohazardous material from edibles in the refrigerator.

I LOVED that book, Karen. Have you read the sequel?

Empliau

Yes, indeed. Back in the 70s. Read them both several times, remember them well. Her high school bore no resemblance to my Catholic high school, though – no high-minded nuns and spiritual teens. Mine had hormonally crazed Vandals and Huns. Great books though.

Madtowngirl

This is why I fail to understand why people get so bent out of shape that the hospital doesn’t want you to eat when delivery is imminent. I mean, when things go wrong, they go wrong so fast. There isn’t time to be worrying about whether you’re going to choke on your own vomit. I ended up having my unplanned C/S about 10 hours after I ate a small lunch, and they were still a little concerned about that.

Seriously, is waiting to eat that big of a deal?

Mattie

I know they used to (and probably still do) give women who went for emergency sections an antacid to help prevent aspiration of vomit. AFAIK women here can eat and drink throughout labour, unless there’s other risk factors that increases the likelihood they might need a section.

Charybdis

That stuff is VILE. And it doesn’t taste any different coming back up later.

My mother almost died at my birth because she’d eaten a big meal right before going into labor and (back in the less enlightened late 70s) they stuck the mask on her and ignored her saying she was going to vomit. She spent the first week of my life suffering with aspiration pneumonia.

Madtowngirl

I’m so sorry that happened to her.

Roadstergal

Oh, that just sounds so miserable. 🙁

Kelly

Plus, they are giving you liquids and other things to keep you alive. It sucks not to eat but they are not trying to freakin kill you.

Charybdis

Not her. She ripped out her IV’s. Because plastic.

Roadstergal

I find IVs so soothing when I’m dehydrated (which I always am when I go in for surgery, because no food or drink). That wonderful cool rush of saline…

Kelly

True. I guess it is also natural to die in childbirth…

Monkey Professor for a Head

In fairness, fasting for prolonged periods is pretty unpleasant. I found that nothing made patients crankier than having to fast. Even worse was when they were kept nil by mouth for surgery which then got cancelled (usually bumped by an emergency case). I always made sure that we had a plan to get them food quickly before going to tell a patient that their procedure was cancelled – a promise of food saved you a lot of grief.

But, you know what, we never kept people fasting for the fun of it. There was always a reason, usually because we didn’t want them to aspirate and die during a surgery. You can make an argument for allowing women to eat during the earlier stages of a low risk labour, but what this woman describes was not a low risk situation.

Kerlyssa

I deal really poorly w hunger, and the 24 hour fasts for my 5 year bloodwork physicals are a horror. But, as hangry and irrational as I may be while hungry, I don’t look back and blame the doctors for that later. This crap was written long after the event took place, and there is no indication she stuck to the not-eating for longer than a couple hours (while actually being examined). Sympathy=nil.

Montserrat Blanco

As most of the regulars know my son, a great almost two year old now without any health problems now and a normal development was born at 28 weeks. I had hoped for a vaginal delivery, as you might remember, I even considered no epidural.

Things started to head south at 24 weeks. My blood pressure started to go up. I followed every single word of advice my doctors made: what to eat, how much to exercise, what drugs to take, everything. When at 27 weeks I developed HELLP sure I got admitted, as many IV lines as they wanted and all the magnessium they felt necessary. I only asked the nurses for a new IV line to be taken when one felt uncomfortable after a few days being in just in order to avoid it getting infected. That was my only request during my hospital admission.

At that point (remember I wanted a vaginal delivery without epidural) I would only have accepted him to be born via CS. Why? Because it was better for him, because he would suffer less. When I was at the OR I only asked where were the neonatologists. I didn’t mind the scar, the pain, the surgery, my once perfect belly not perfect anymore, nothing. I was just worried about the NICU.

During those days I did not complain about the IV lines, the magnessium side effects, the … Nothing. I just thought it was better to have them myself than my baby having them.

I do not remember how many IV lines I had. I remember how many IV lines my son had and how he cried with every one of them. That is still painful for me, very painful, in fact.

I do not consider myself special. I think I am normal, very normal in fact. Every single mom I met at the NICU was just like me, pumping endless hours, hating every single moment of not taking our babies home, signing lullabies during painful procedures, we were normal people on a very unnatural situation and we loved our children very much.

I can not even get how can someone be so narcissistic to behave like that. She was very lucky that her baby breathed alone, most of them need help at 24 weeks, and birthing alone is not a great way of getting proper resuscitation inmediately after birth. She was lucky, that is all. And she did not think about her baby even once. She only cared about herself. Apparently the four months at the NICU meant nothing for her either, that makes sense since she only cared about herself.

demodocus

as much as i hate ivs, it was so much worse to see them on my kids

MI Dawn

I absolutely hated putting them in babies. So much so, that I got very good at doing it in 1 stick almost always, to reduce the pain. The only time I failed first stick was a very dehydrated toddler. We ended up calling the resident for a cut-down, the kid was so dehydrated (yay norovirus in August in Virginia – the poor parents tried, but they just couldn’t replace the fluids fast enough.)

Gene

Have you tried subQ fluid? It rocks! I have an chronic kid who horrid veins and mother adores subQ.

MI Dawn

This was about 29 years ago. I don’t think anyone was doing it back then. The peds nurses only called the newborn nursery nurses for help when they couldn’t get a line in. In this case, the ER had failed, the peds nurses had failed, and we tried and failed. Poor kid had about 15 sticks! What I really remember, to be honest, was being 8 months pregnant, in the treatment room on the Peds floor (because no kids got bad things done in the beds, all hurty things were done in the treatment room), in a power outage so no AC running, dripping with sweat, trying to get a line in this kid who felt like he was a piece of paper.

I also remember when we got back to the nursery, the other nursery nurse and I who’d gone up, stripped off our sodden scrubs AND underwear, and put on dry scrubs. We couldn’t stand wearing that soaking wet clothing another minute!

Stephanie Rotherham

I’m glad your son’s okay now.

Einelorelei

=( I don’t understand these crunch women. I hate people who are willing to sacrifice their children so they can look cool to their batcrap crazy friends. I bet she’s against vaccines, too. How to people turn out this way and become so stupid like this?

Irène Delse

It’s appalling. She’s complaining that the OB used gloves! Lady, do you want a uterine infection on top of your rapidly failing placenta? And bitching about nurses poking about to find veins? That’s what comes from heavy blood loss, most likely: depleted veins that can’t be felt easily through the skin.

She knows nothing because she closes her mind to anything not in her “natural” fantasy. Even when reality shakes it in her face. Disgusting.

momofone

I remember as a very new mother being in knots at the doctor’s office because I was so worried that someone wouldn’t wash their hands before they examined my son, and then I would have to ask them to do so, and I didn’t want a reputation for being difficult and demanding. Everyone walked in, washed their hands, and proceeded about their business, just like, I don’t know, medical professionals doing their jobs. Imagine that!

SOBfollower

Lets remember that she is telling the best version of herself here. I bet she was a lot worse to hospital staff than she gives herself credit for

attitude devant

I think everyone here knows I’m an obstetrician, and many know I was treated for premature labor at a similar gestational age. Ergo, reading this my heart splits into two pieces. The mom part of me remembers being willing to do anything to keep my girl inside a little bit longer and gasps that anyone could be so cavalier. The OB side remembers all the times I’ve had a desperately premature mom who had a less-than-ideal outcome, and is outraged on behalf of all the people trying their damnedest to care for this mother and baby and who searched themselves to try and understand how they let this mom down. There was probably a come-to-Jesus meeting where that bathroom delivery was analyzed for clues to where they missed that imminent birth….not realizing Mom was a freebirthing freak.

By the way, Mom? The magnesium was mostly about preventing cerebral palsy. You’re welcome

David

I wonder if this infant was treated for ROP. I can guarantee this lady will not take the infant for follow up with an ophthalmologist put that baby in foster care! Or have court mandated regular doctor visits

I thought of a dozen former students of mine who had severe complications during that window of a pregnancy. None of them ever decided to start playing “I’m so much better at this med thing than the doctors” and no one ever whined about the lack of snacks.

Yes, the average pregnant 16 year-old teen who has failed out of a traditional high school is more responsible than this lunatic.

BeatriceC

I taught middle school, so not so many pregnant students, but I did have a handful of them in my ten years of teaching them. I’d agree with your assessment. 13 ad 14 year olds living in abject poverty without the advantages of nice middle class and above schools made wiser decisions with their babies and bodies than this woman did.

Puffin

I’m sure if this woman ever needs to be operated on, she’ll be totally okay if the doctors forgo gloves and just make sure their hands are really clean, since apparently that’s all that’s necessary to prevent devastating infections.

I wouldn’t be surprised if her amateur attention to her own cervix may have pushed things along faster than they would have otherwise gone. I can get being curious, but dear gods when you are in the midsts of trying to keep a baby IN the uterus is not the time to go poking around your own damn cervix. Especially when there’s bleeding. Hello massive infection risk.

Platos_Redhaired_Stepchild

This is abuse. How the heck did this kid not end up in foster care? The hospital let this selfish fool take this poor infant home? Why? She isn’t going to get it proper medical care! She’ll fill the poor thing up with “tinctures” instead of real medicine. Dear lord, this poor kid.

Puffin

As has been evidenced many times, people pretty much need to medically neglect at least one (possible more) child to death before authorities will do anything about these nutcases.

Jennifer K. Myrna

Unless they’re poor. And especially if they’re brown-skinned poor people. Then the baby would be taken away instantly?

The Bofa on the Sofa

Why did she let the baby in the NICU? Jeez, I bet they even had the baby on an IV and made him/her wear a little plastic bracelet. Why is that ok for the baby but not for her?

Gene

In the four and a half months that baby was there? Half a million dollars worth of EBIL INTERVENTIONS, I’m sure. And no snacks!

guest

And they probably didn’t give him any juice in the whole four months he was there!

momofone

No! Not plastic bracelets!

Sleeping in my Dreams

As a mother of a preemie, I don’t understand this at all. Being told that my little boy needed to be born at 33 weeks was one of the scariest moments of my life. I didn’t care about how he was going to get here. That ship has sailed. I was worried about his undeveloped lungs, his size and all sorts of other things. I didn’t think twice about agreeing to the C/S. It was what was best for him, although it wasn’t what I had planned. I remember the relief I felt when the Nurse Practitioner from the NICU came in to the OR and introduced herself. I remember telling her to take care of my baby. She promised she would and she did.

He’s one now. A healthy toddler that loves to climb and torture the dog. Looking back, I wouldn’t have change a thing about his birth. It was his birth, not mine.

How can this woman look at herself in the mirror and call herself a mother? Mothers are not this selfish. I hope she finds what ever is missing in her pitiful little life. She may have given birth. But she is not a mother.

David

I wonder if there are other such crazy people who did not have such happy endings. Obviously they wouldn’t blog about it if the baby died.

Sean Jungian

I wouldn’t be surprised if someone did blog about that, though. There have been enough triumphant “I had my dream NCB oh but my baby died oh well at least I had things my way!” posts to make me uncertain.

Heidi_storage

Uh, is this a birth story, or a restaurant review on Yelp? On what planet is “they didn’t give me any snacks” deserving of more concern than “I was bleeding like crazy and my dangerously premature baby was in danger of dying”?

Sean Jungian

Her constant bitching about the hospitality not available at 3:00 a.m. in an emergency situation is mind-boggling.

Gene

Not really. I get tons of people coming to the ED at all hours of the day and night furious that X specialist and Y procedure isn’t instantly available.

“I know that you’ve had chronic abdominal pain for three years and now diarrhea for six weeks, but was there anything new or different that caused you to come in at 3am on a Sunday morning?”

Dr Kitty

“What exactly changed with your chronic illness that made you decide to call me five minutes before 6pm on a Friday afternoon and request an immediate emergency housecall?”

“I just thought it was a while since I’ve seen a Dr”.

“Yes, it has indeed been several months, but why do you need seen NOW?”

“Oh, everything is fine, but I’m going away on holiday tomorrow and just want checked over”.

“If you can go on holiday, you can come to the surgery and don’t need a housecall, and if you are well enough to go on holiday, you don’t need an emergency assessment. I suggest you make an appointment at the surgery to see a GP when you get home”.

“That’s terrible! I’m going to complain!”

The Bofa on the Sofa

When my wife was on emergency call, the ones she hated the most were the ones who called at 3 am because their dog has vomiting and diarrhea. “How long has this been going on?” “Four days.”

This has been going on 4 days and you need to call me at 3 in the morning?

Of course, we know what happened. The dog shit all over the house in the middle of the night, and that sent them over the edge.

Azuran

Yea….we get that all the time. Despite being open 12h per day, with also ‘walk-in’ periods every day, people still find a way to wait 6 days until their pet is dying before deciding to bring them in.
Then, if they don’t call at 3 am, they just randomly show up with a dying pet during lunch break and then complain that the vet is out for lunch.
For some reason, during their 30 minutes
drive to the hospital, they didn’t think that calling us to inform us
they were coming was a good idea….you know, so the on call vet could
be called back to the hospital if he’s out,
so we can get an idea of what is coming and get ready for it.

moto_librarian

I’m getting ready to take one of our kittens to the vet tomorrow. He started having mild diarrhea yesterday, which I figured was from eating spaghettios off the kitchen table while I wasn’t looking. He is 5 months old and still playful and hydrated, but I noticed a bit of blood in his stool tonight. He was just tested for parasites 2 weeks ago when we brought him and his sis home from the Humane Society, but I’m not taking the chance. It’s not fun cleaning up after him, but the bigger concern is his health as I’ve gotten quite attached to the little booger.

Roadstergal

Who can watch their dog vomiting for four days and do ‘watchful waiting’??

Azuran

4 days is not even that much (it is a lot, but not for a lot of pet owners). I’d say it’s the average waiting time for the pets I see.
Each week I have a few cases of vomiting and anorexia for at least a week.
Once of twice per month, I’ll get a ‘I dunno, more than 3 weeks’

Roadstergal

🙁

I mean, calling the vet and asking them if the dog should come in is so little effort – I’ve done that 3 or 4 times (and many thanks to my patient vet). I guess they just don’t want to hear ‘yes, bring your dog in’?

Azuran

Usually I’d say they are trying to save money with magical thinking and hoping their pets will heal on their own. They just don’t think about the fact that the more they wait, the sicker their pets are going to be, and the more expensive the treatment is going to be (if you can even save the pet at that point)

But quite a few of them are just absolutely neglectful fucks who deserve to be hit in the face with a shovel.

BeatriceC

Yeah, my avian vet is great about my weird phone calls from time to time. I’d rather call and be told not to worry than miss something that might kill one of my birds. And birds have two states of being: perfectly healthy and at death’s door, as they hide symptoms until they’re nearly dead.

Azuran

A had a client not long ago come in with a bird 80% through death’s door. I kid you not, the owner told me that she had noticed her bird was sick 5 days before, and stopped eating 3 days before, but she didn’t bring him then because she knew birds are ‘extremely strong and resistant’
Needless to say it didn’t make it ¬_¬

BeatriceC

Oh, geeze. Birds are anything but “extremely strong and resistant.” That poor bird. I inspect poop daily (during cage cleanings) to watch for signs of trouble. If anything is off I consider their diets first (have they eaten a lot of fruit in the last day, as that can make it runny), have they been particularly stressed for any reason (can also make it runny), etc. Their food is measured and weighed and I document how much they eat and how much they leave behind, and note any snacks they get throughout the day so I can notice early if their eating habits change. I might be a little obsessive, but they can get so sick so fast, I’d rather be obsessive and catch something small early on than wait until it’s a big problem and risk the bird not making it.

Azuran

I think, sadly, that exotic pets get the worst of it. There are marvellous owners like you out there. But the majority of owners are sadly not good owners and have no idea, or actual interest, in providing them with proper environment and care.
Small mammals are basically cute ‘low need’ pets for kids to neglect. And birds are basically cute moving decoration to put in a corner, with unbalanced diets and unstimulating environment. and when they become too noisy, you put cover on their cages.

BeatriceC

I think you are correct, unfortunately. And don’t take this the wrong way, but unless there’s no specialty vets in your area, the first sign of an incompetent bird owner is taking them to a general vet. To me that’s like asking your GP to perform open heart surgery. They got some training years ago and know generally how it works, but aren’t the experts because they focused on something else. And for the record, I wouldn’t take a dog or a cat to my avian vet for the same reason. They’d go to a general vet who is far more experienced with them than my avian vet.

I do like the emergency vet clinic near me. The vets there are general vets, but they partner with two avian/exotic vets who take turns on call should a bird or other exotic come in.

Azuran

XD I’m not taking it the wrong way. If there was a specialized exotic pet near where I work, I wouldn’t practice exotic pet medicine at all. I am entirely too aware of all the medical tools and knowledge I don’t have and basically don’t have any techs or anyone who is even able to properly give exotic pets any kind of treatment. If my pets where to get sick with something I couldn’t handle, I’d totally go see a specialist myself.

But I’m in an isolated area, with the closest specialty vet between 2-5h of driving depending on where you live.
I always do recommend that they go see the specialized vet. So far, in 3 years, only 1 did. I deal mostly with the ‘bad’ owners. 95% of the time they refuse even the basic diagnostic procedure I offer and either opt for euthanasia or empirical treatment with antibiotic.

BeatriceC

What’s funny is I’d totally drive five hours if I thought my birds were sick. I imagine if I lived in an area like you or Bofa, I would use you or his wife for general check up/annual exam type stuff, but as soon as they got sick they’d be headed to the specialist five hours away.

Azuran

People where I live have this weird mental blockage at the thought of crossing the natural park to go to a specialized hospital not matter the reason. Even for dog and cats, convincing them to go to the specialised clinic is extremely hard, it might as well be on the other side of the world.

BeatriceC

I suppose we’re not too many generations removed from the idea that animals get no vet care at all, unless they’re large farm animals, and sometimes not even then. The idea to even use a vet is still pretty new in some places, so the idea of a specialty vet would be even more foreign. I just don’t understand it when people get *exotic* animals and don’t think they need a specialist. In the areas you and Bofa describe, I could understand getting regular care from a general vet who’s taken the time to learn at least some of the specialty stuff, but then I’d listen to that vet when they told me to go to a specialist (I’d do it anyway, but we’re talking hypotheticals here). I just don’t understand the reluctance. Heck, humans specialize out body parts/systems. Why on earth would a single doctor be an expert not just on one body system, but dozens of different species! It seems so obvious to me.

guest

This. When I was a kid, only dogs and cats went to vets, and mainly it was just for shots or needing to be put down. I had to get a vet to sign off on a form to take my bird on a plane in the 1990s, and that was the first time he saw a vet, and the vet didn’t know what to do with him. I don’t think it was until 2001 that I discovered avian vets and how they can actually do things to birds besides look at them and say “yep, he looks sick.”

Of course, yesterday I read a review of someone taking their goldfish to the vet, and I have to say I raised an eyebrow.

Caylynn

Really? We are moving this Fall, and one of the things that concerns me the most is that we will no longer be in a city with one of the worlds top vet colleges, but a city that is 2 hours away from the nearest vet specialist. Our cats have had enough care at the vet college to make this a real concern (HCM, lymphoma, recurring gum hyperplasia, hypothermia under anaesthetic, septic abdomen, just to name a few concerns).

Azuran

It really depends on the place. When I worked at the vet colleges, people came from all over the place. Most did >1hour of driving, and quite often >3 hours. It’s not necessarily that far to get specialized care (if you have a car.)
In the whole province where I live, specialized care of basically any kind (either for humans or pets) will only be available in 3 cities.
It’s really nothing weird to have to do >2 hours of driving to get basically anywhere.
But people where I live really have something against getting out of the county or something.

The Bofa on the Sofa

To be fair, it’s not always easy finding the avian specialist. My wife is the closest thing to one in the area where she works, and so she does actually get the serious bird owners,and gets referrals from the good vets in the area (the ones who know they are out of their league), but even then, it’s not like she is board certified or anything (although she interned with someone who is and has a good relationship with her, but she is 1 hour away)

BeatriceC

That’s why I put the condition of not having one in the area as an good reason to not use a specialist. I’m lucky to have access to one of the most highly regarded avian specialists in the world in my area. “Internship with Dr J” is listed as a bragging point on the CV’s of many younger avian vets. Not everybody has that kind of vet nearby.

guest

I can’t find a good one where I live now, which is weird, because when I lived in a small midwestern city, I had no problem finding a great one. Now that I’m in a major city, there’s just one, and it caters to the ultra-rich and I can’t afford it.

BeatriceC

May I recommend my favorite parrot forum? There’s an ongoing thread where people can ask for vet recommendations in their areas, or you can join and start your own thread. It’s http://www.parrotforums.com/forums.php and it’s a wonderful community.

guest

I’ll check it out, but last time I checked out such a resource there just wasn’t anything in my area. It doesn’t help that I don’t have a car.

BeatriceC

The people there who live in or around your area may know of somebody who might not be a certified avian vet, but is like Bofa’s wife and Azuran, who has done some training with avian specialists and/or has a working relationship with one and would be better than somebody who has no specialty training at all.

Stephanie Rotherham

As a bunny slave, hear hear; an animal is never low need. Even my hamster, as grumpy as he is, needs attention. And my rabbit? She’s a demanding little diva, and is currently snuggled up to me; which is lovely, but I am very lucky she likes to be cuddled, as most rabbits don’t, which is when most owners lose interest.
How dare a prey animal dislike being held without escape and panic; how dare they need more space than a three foot hutch at the bottom of the garden; how dare they need a very specific diet; and how dare they need a rabbit savvy vet when things go wrong. I’m also lucky that Amy has only needed to see a vet a couple of times so far, and that she’s been easily treated. Rabbits are so delicate, especially their guts. And I just somehow offended her, so she’s off me now (and washing her face). She’ll be back.

BeatriceC

Funny those prey animals and their natures not being like cats and dogs. My birds are friendly on their terms. As we say in the bird world, you can’t tell a parrot to do anything; you ask it nicely. Something tells me that those of you who are good small mammal owners have similar issues as us bird owners when it comes to animals being dumped as soon as people figure out that their version of cuddly is vastly different than dogs and cats. Bird rescues are full of animals who were dumped because the owner didn’t want to put the time and effort into helping the birds become well adjusted.

Stephanie Rotherham

Rabbits are the third most popular pet in the UK, but also the most neglected; if I remember my statistics right, there’s something like 60,000 in rescues across the country? I might be wrong, but there is a huge problem, one that is only slowly being changed.

Those whom truly love rabbits accept that they are in ones really in charge, that any interaction is purely on their terms and with proper etiquette. Unfortunately, far too many people get rabbits, thinking they’ll be well behaved, quiet, non demanding cuddly toys, and when they turn into nasty, hormonal, aggressive (defensive), destructive creatures with no litter training, they either get put at the bottom of the garden to wither away and die (and if an unspayed doe, most likely get cancer in four years), or dumped at a shelter to wait for maybe years before adoption, since babies are so much cuter and easy to get hold of.

(That was a bit long, but I’ll talk as long as someone will listen; I am interested in hearing more about your birds, as a sidenote!)

corblimeybot

I’m acquainted with someone who ran a fraudulent rabbit rescue, that kept rabbits in deplorable conditions. Until then, I had no idea of how so many people neglected and abandoned rabbits, or that rabbit hoarders were a thing. People can be so rotten.

BeatriceC

People hoard all kinds of animals. It’s really a sad thing. We hear most often about cat hoarders, and then dog hoarders, but people hoard every single type of animal that are kept as pets. It’s really sad.

BeatriceC

I sometimes feel like I sidetrack the discussion too much. I’m seriously the crazy bird lady. MrC says I should feel lucky that he humors me. I remind him that it’s his fault. I never liked birds until I met him (mostly because I wasn’t around them so I didn’t know how wonderful they are).

And I’m happy to listen to you about your bunnies. They sound so adorable, and you obviously care for yours well.

Stephanie Rotherham

Thank you; it is always nice to be told you’re a good owner. I can tell from the way you talk about your birds how much you care for them, and how knowledgeable you are about their needs; I don’t know a thing about bird care, so it’s quite fascinating to hear more about it. I’ve only ever had small mammals and a dog as pets.

(I do have a somewhat bad habit of hijacking discussions to talk about my rabbit, and I’m definately a crazy bunny lady in the making!)

I only have the one, Amy, right now; three year old black and white lop. In Britain she’s be called a dwarf lop, but she’s nearly three pounds over the breed weight standard, so mostly she’s her own animal. There are areas in which I wish I was a better owner; she could do with more space, and a husband, to make her happier, but I don’t think it’s possible for her to love me any more than she already does. Well, love might not be the right word exactly, but trust + affection is at the maximum, and that is far more than I could have ever hoped for.

BeatriceC

Today I’m eyeball deep in bird poop. I change out the paper linings every day and do a quick wipe down, but Tuesday is the deep cleaning day. All four cages and their dozen play perches get deep cleaned, as well as the areas around their equipment. I hate doing it all at once, but I’ve tried to space it out and it just doesn’t work as well.

guest

Yeah. I came home from work late one night to find my bird on the floor of his cage moving his head uncontrollably. My regular vet was closed, but I took him to an emergency vet that night. He seemed 100% fine in the morning. (Well, he had been diagnosed with gout and was being treated, but he seemed fine in terms of his current condition.) There wasn’t anything they could do for him, sadly.

BeatriceC

I’m so sorry about your bird. It’s maddening that they do that. I’m obsessive about the health of my birds but I know that might not even be good enough.

guest

Thanks. This was almost ten years ago now. He was a 27 year old cockatiel I’d had since childhood, and he had a good life, I think. The emergency vet staff were kind and gave us a room to be alone in to say goodbye, and I bawled and he snuggled against me (which, of course, drove home just how ill he was, but I was grateful that he recognized me). I’m tearing up a bit writing this, but I don’t get attached to pets as deeply as I do to people.

BeatriceC

I have a 25 year old cockatiel. I’m dreading the day, which is sure to come soon, when I will be facing the same thing.

guest

I now have an elderly lovebird, so I’ll be facing it again soon, too.

BeatriceC

This is the sucky part about pets. My other birds are going to middle age adults. The Amazon is 32, the macaw is about 10’and the Senegal is about 9. I actually need to consider what will happen to them if I go before they do. Thankfully my boys and my stepdaughters are willing to take them if necessary.

guest

That’s why I never got a bigger parrot for myself. I haven’t yet had the stability in life where I could set up care for a bird that outlived me. Maybe someday I’ll be able to foster or adopt one that is already older (and maybe my kids will be willing to take over care – they are too young to ask now). But I am happy with small parrots. I would really just once like to have a bird that talked!

BeatriceC

Fostering is a great idea! The rescues are full past capacity of parrots who have been surrendered or have outlived their humans. If you can handle it, I have one acquaintance who does only end of life care for amazons. He takes in birds in their twilight years usually after their humans have passed away or gotten too frail themselves to care for them. He’s essentially an Amazon hospice. But even if you don’t go that far, volunteering for a rescue group would be a great thing. You get all the fun of the large bird (and the work), without the decades long commitment.

guest

Right now, I’m not allowed to keep any other pets in my apartment per the co-op board (I have special permission for the two I have), and I don’t think we have a local parrot rescue. Otherwise, I would totally volunteer. I’m definitely keeping it in mind for someday when circumstances change.

I’m pretty sure I have the best exotic vet ever. Yes, I do know I’m spoiled.

Charybdis

That’s so cool! Pardon my geeky adoration moment.

BeatriceC

Lol. I meant it when I said my vet was one of the most highly regarded exotic vets in the world. I’m very lucky to live where his office is not only the closest avian vets office, but the most convienient too.

The Bofa on the Sofa

Yeah, it’s bad enough that they wait that long and come in during office hours. But the emergency call in the middle of the night? Ack.

BeatriceC

I’ve only had one after hours call in the last couple years, and it was around 7PM and I called within minutes of the fall. Charlotte fell and was bleeding out of her beak. I knew that a bird bleeding wasn’t good, but wasn’t sure how quickly I should act if I couldn’t get the bleeding stopped, or what other things I could use besides pressure (wasn’t sure if I could use styptic powder on her beak). The emergency vet gave me a couple things to try but said if we couldn’t get the bleeding stopped in 30 minutes to bring her in, so that’s what we did. I’d certainly call the vet at 3AM if something new happened at 3AM, but not something that had been going on for days.

Roadstergal

I’ve had only one here, too – Mocha developed a really tender hindquarter after tumbling in a run-around with Latte, and couldn’t sit without squeaking. Two hours with the emergency vet, and it turned out to be just a pulled muscle – that was a relief, although trying to get her to comply with reduced activity – especially with Latte not getting the memo – was tough. :p

Latte’s going to the vet this afternoon. She’s been scratching her ear for a few days – the vet said it wasn’t urgent, so we could wait until the next ‘regular’ appointment this afternoon, but she should come in. Hope it’s just crud in the ear… nothing obvious to a layperson.

BeatriceC

Hope Latte feels better soon!

Roadstergal

She had a big ol’ foxtail deep in her ear canal. 🙁 The vet removed it and put in a few soothing ear drops so she wouldn’t scratch while she healed.

She was a good girl, if anxious, so they got a beach run, and she’s been acting normal since then. Glad it got pulled out before it got ugly!

BeatriceC

Glad it got pulled out and she’s feeling better!

Empliau

Ouch. Poor baby, it must have hurt. Glad she’s feeling better!

Roadstergal

She seemed to mind the vet waiting room more than the extraction. :p Haaaate foxtails! 🙁 🙁 🙁 I examine the girls after every outing for them, but this one just got somewhere I couldn’t see.

Sounds potentially like allergies, not that I’m trying to diagnose her. When I took Nixie to the vet the other day to make sure she didn’t have parasites, I had him look at her ears. They were cruddy and little red on the outside, but he said her actual canal was perfectly healthy. Now both our dogs get Zyrtec twice a day. Got some Gentizol to alleviate the itching and kill any possible fungus and bacteria. Pollen must be bad right now. Hope she feels better soon, though!

Roadstergal

Her ears look perfect from a look down them with a flashlight, but I’m not going to dig down in there. 🙂 We’ll see what they say.

Azuran

We are there exactly for that, if there is an accident, no matter the time, we will help with pleasure.
But it’s when people call at 3 am with ‘my dog has been vomiting for a week.’ or ‘it’s been in labour for 2 days’ that you can’t help but lose faith in humanity.

The Bofa on the Sofa

But it’s when people call at 3 am with ‘my dog has been vomiting for a week.’ or ‘it’s been in labour for 2 days’ that you can’t help but lose faith in humanity.

And even then, you do it.

BeatriceC

I can only imagine the frustration. And by then there’s probably a lot less you can do for an animal that’s likely much sicker than he was several days prior. I honestly don’t know if I could do your job without punching people.

Azuran

Usually, I get thought with lots of sarcasm, dark humour and a nice cold beer.
But now that I’m full of pregnancy hormones and can’t drink, it is indeed very hard not to punch people.

Charybdis

Last summer when we had Lexi spayed, she removed her stitches before I picked her up at the vet. They put in staples and sent her home in the Cone of Shame. The next morning, I took off the Cone of Shame so she could eat breakfast and get a drink of water. In the 2 minutes it took me to put up the food and grab my shoes, she had eaten breakfast and removed her staples. Back to the vet she went and they stitched her up with stainless steel wire and left some long, poky ends so she would be less inclined to mess with them. Picked her up and changed her Cone of Shame to an inflatable neck ring that was easier for her to eat, drink and sleep in and kept her away from the frankenstitches. This was wonderful until about 3 days before the frankenstitches were to come out. Her inflatable ring had lost some air and she was getting perilously close to those frankenstitches. I took off the collar to blow it up more and Lexi immediately ran upstairs. I sent DS after her but it was too late. She had removed the frankenstitches and was bleeding. Off to the emergency vet we went. X-rays to determine if she swallowed some of the wire, sedation and painkillers so they could re-re-restitch her. Antibiotics, painkillers and another 10 days in the inflatable collar.

I felt like an idiot and the worst owner in the world, but I wasn’t going to wait around for a couple of days to “see if it would be okay”.

BeatriceC

I’d think 24 hours max, depending on the severity, would be the longest waiting time before at least a phone call. One vomit wouldn’t alarm me, but more than one, or runny stools, would trigger at least a phone call.

Empliau

James Herriot has some great stories about that – the cow in labor for hours, the farmer trying his dad’s home remedies, and then the (winter) 3 am call for an animal that is sometimes past help. Followed up by the stony eye and the expectation that the bill will reflect the animal’s survival (and the farmer’s frugal expectations) rather than the house call…

Clorinda

When I broke my ankle at about 7:30 one Friday, winter morning, got to the hospital in an ambulance near 8 am, I had to wait for the orthopedic specialist to come see me after the x-rays to tell me what would happen. By the time he had seen me, that hospital had 2 more ankle breaks, one from one of their own employees going outside and slipping on the ice (after a deep freeze that followed a January thaw so lots of frozen puddles). Even when it is “normal business hours” you may have to wait for a doctor because of the other emergencies going on. I was first on the list, but they had to call him over and he had to assess me, assess the others, get time in the OR, and then do the surgery. The others may have had to wait quite a few hours before being fully treated.

Therese

She definitely sounds quite narcissistic, but the thing I don’t completely understand is if when the doctor asked whether they wanted to save the baby, because they were leaving it up to the parents since he was just 24 weeks, if the mom had said, no, don’t save the baby, I don’t think people would be nearly as outraged as they are at her free birthing and then allowing the doctors to save her baby. Why is this? Why is it okay for a mom to choose to let her baby die but not okay for her to decide taking certain procedures upon herself isn’t worth it?

corblimeybot

You’re assuming she is reliably narrating the behavior of the medical providers involved. I’d think twice before doing that.

Therese

I’m not assuming, as I’ve heard many other accounts of parents being given this same choice.

Heidi_storage

Indeed, and I have the deepest sympathy for parents who have to decide whether to subject their tiny baby to a bunch of painful and invasive procedures (and the baby might not live, anyway), or whether to let the baby receive palliative care only. Although 25 weeks is a bit late for that–I thought that 24 weeks was generally the “let’s-go-for-it” cutoff? Doctors and nurses, what do you say?

BeatriceC

A lot has changed since my babies were born, but I had the choice to attempt to save or provide comfort care up to 26 weeks.

Tosca

I think the gestational age is a rough guideline, but each baby is assessed on its own health. This poor little thing had suffered a dodgy placenta with regular heavy bleeds for a couple of months, and the mother’s blood volume was extremely low leading up to the birth. He may have been in pretty bad shape.

Puffin

At my centre (large academic medical centre that is also the regional high risk centre so gets all the preemies) as I understand it for 23/24 weekers interventions are very much a case-by-case basis, but from 25 weeks onwards, it’s pretty much automatic.

Heidi_storage

I can understand it, and I’m actually quite pro-life. A baby born at 24 weeks may or may not make it, is going to require a really massive number of interventions and a long, expensive NICU stay, and is likely to have longterm problems. In other words, the parents’ choice is not clear-cut; it is agonizing and difficult.

This woman, on the other hand, is treating the baby like an afterthought. Moreover, it is very, very difficult not to blame her for resisting her doctors’ and nurses’ advice. We will never know if the kid could have stayed in the womb any longer, but this mother clearly didn’t care about anything except her own experience.

Therese

Yes, I guess that makes sense that her attitude is truly atrocious, but I’ve encountered many people that seem outraged that someone wouldn’t have a c-section for a micropremie. Where if a woman chose to abort a baby that had a very high chance of dying or being born with a disability, that would just be fine with those people. But choose not to take major surgery upon yourself for a baby that has a high chance of being born dead and disabled and that makes you out to be some kind of monster, apparently.

BeatriceC

If she was actively choosing comfort care, this would be an entirely different discussion. But that’s not what she was doing.

LaMont

It isn’t the surgery itself, it’s all the previous choices, disdaining the treatments that perhaps could have lowered the need for such a drastic final “intervention,” that is pissing people off. When people decide *not to be parents*, that’s when the pro-choice people say “great! don’t have a kid then,” but when people decide *to be parents* then they’re taking on the package, in terms of what people expect them to do.

Yes, it’s tough, and ultimately, women have the legal rights to do what they want while the fetuses are in their bodies, but it’s very bad form to do things that are known to be worse, medically, for the fetuses. We can condemn a woman’s choices without saying that the law should eliminate the legal rights of women.

corblimeybot

It’s hard to think of a reply to this, because you’re sort of debating people who aren’t present in this conversation.

moto_librarian

Again, it’s not about whether or not she wants to have a c-section. It’s about whether or not she wants her child to live. She would have to consent to a c-section anyway, so it’s a moot point. What she did was knowingly labor and deliver her baby on a bathroom floor, and then expect the medical staff to deal with it.

And I bet that, if the baby shows any long-term disabilities and/or problems, she’ll blame the doctors and hospital and sue the heck out of them.

moto_librarian

At least she’s provided the perfect defense for the hospital. In her own words.

BeatriceC

The free birth itself is only a small part of the narrative. She repeatedly chose to endanger the welfare of the child by ignoring symptoms, failing to get appropriate care, then refusing to follow doctors orders. She showed complete indifference (depraved indifference, if you ask me) the the actual health and welfare of the child. She didn’t have to have a 24 week preemie. It’s possible that if she did everything right, she still would have, but it’s even more possible that she could have bought that baby a few extra days or even weeks, and that would have made a huge difference. Her narrative is all about herself with the baby as a prop and and afterthought. This is what is enraging most of us readers.

Therese

Yeah, I agree that is enraging. It just seems like many people cross over to condemning any mother who would choose to decline a c-section for a micropremie. I am curious if you think that is ever a valid choice for a mother to say, “The chances of my baby dying or being disabled at this gestation are so high that I’m not willing to take the risks of surgery upon myself.”?

Heidi_storage

Probably, but your question is a bit irrelevant to this thread!

BeatriceC

It depends. If your goal is to save the baby, then I cannot comprehend doing anything that would add to his already high chance of death. If your goal is comfort care, then I have no issues with choosing a vaginal birth. I vaginally delivered my twins and my singleton who were born way too early for any chance of survival. That was most likely done because a c-section at those gestational ages would have made future pregnancies even more risky (I didn’t know that at the time, some of the OB’s here finally explained the most likely reason years later). But those babies (18 and 16 weeks) had zero chance of survival, so the most reasonable option was the one that had the best outcome for me. With my 24 weeker, I wanted everything possible done to reduce is already treacherously high risk of death.

Azuran

That is absolutely a valid choice. But it has nothing to do with the case at hand.

corblimeybot

This woman claims she freebirthed the child because she believed it would increase the kid’s chance of survival, then she accepted four months of NICU care. She didn’t go into this knowing she wanted to choose palliative care for the baby. If she had, it would have made more sense to refuse the c-section.

But she claims that she believed freebirthing would give the child a better chance to live. She didn’t decline the c-section for the reason you’re bringing up, so it’s not relevant to this particular conversation. It seems like you have other motivations for asking this question out of the commenters here.

guest

This. She claimed her actions were safest for her AND the baby. They were not safe for either of them.

Tosca

Absolutely that’s true. I doubt anyone will deny that sometimes, the baby’s chances of survival are so low that the best option is simply to accept its death and make the birth as non-traumatic as possible for the mother. There’s no reason for her to have a c-section in that scenario, if she would prefer a vaginal birth.

This is not one of those times.

Irène Delse

But we’re not talking about this kind of situation. Looks to me like you’re trying to deflect the conversation toward subjects that may need more interesting to you, but irrelevant to this article.

Amy

This isn’t about declining a c-section.

Sarah

It is always a valid choice for a woman to decline a section if she so wishes. The problem here is the claim that the woman concerned chose the birth she did because it was the safest option. You can support bodily autonomy whilst also correcting things that are plain wrong.

Azuran

Because it’s one thing to make the informed decision not to treat the very premature baby after doing everything to give it a fighting chance.
It’s another one to carelessly do everything to put the kid in danger and then ask the doctor to fix up your stupid choices. If she wanted her kid to live, why did she do everything to make sure he had as little chances as possible to do so?

Sean Jungian

You’re also assuming that people wouldn’t be as upset with that as with the freebirthing. I really don’t see how you’re getting to that conclusion.

SOBfollower

If this so called ‘mom’ had have the aproppiate care from the beginning. Like stop those large and exaustive walks the fist moment she felt something was wrong (she did not), no to carry her older kids on arms when she was already having blood loss.( But she did) and then when it was pretty obvious that emergency medical intervention was needed she decided to ask a friend and drink tea instead. And eventually she went to hospital to refuse evey single procedure she could and to be rude and mean with everybody there that was trying their best to help.
And on top of that she decided to give birth ti a micro preemie in the bathroom.
It is not about a surgery she didn’t want is about all that negligence towards her inocent child.
If she had had proper prenatal care and in the last moment just opted for vaginal over c-section (giving that the baby could viable or not) fine with me but this was not the case.

Montserrat Blanco

It is her absolute right to do so, of course. Is it the best for her baby? No. Did she think about her baby once in the whole process? No. Did she worry about getting the best medical care possible for her baby? No. Was it her right? Absolutely.

Let me ask you something: is this about her rights? Does one need to exercise every single right we have? Because I do have the right to jump out of my window and kill myself now, but somehow I am not particularly fond of the idea.

Amazed

You don’t think? Please. You’ve been here long enough to know that many people here, me (the Big Bad Meanie Who Just Can’t Understand How Poor Homebirthing Dearies Have Not The Tiniest Bit of Responsibility) think that abortion should be legal till the last trimester. Our rationale is very simple: abortion is about a woman’s body and anyway, we aren’t talking about a botched procedure that might leave a living baby with lifelong consequences. Because not having a living baby is, well, kind of the purpose here. But freebirthing mothers are supposed to want their children to live, so they’re fucking responsible not to fuck up with preemies’ already lessened chances in my book.

moto_librarian

The problem is that all that she talks about is herself. I assume that she went to the hospital because she wanted her baby to live – otherwise, she may as well have signed out AMA. Of course, she may have understood that doing that could lead to her own death, but she gives no indication that she had discussed what she wanted with doctors. I would not judge anyone who chose not subject a micropreemie to the level of care required to keep him or her alive. It is incredibly invasive care, and the success rate is low for babies at that gestational age. If she had said that she would rather avoid a c-section for a baby that was likely to die, I could understand that. But that’s nowhere in the narrative. All that she can blather about is how she “lost” her chance to freebirth at home.

I had a serious pph that almost warranted a blood transfusion. It was terrifying. Reading about this nitwit taking out her I.V. and failing to notify the staff that she was in labor makes me want to shake her. Hard. Can you imagine how scary this was for the doctors and nurses? That they also suffer emotionally when things like this happen? She is a first-class asshole.

Monkey Professor for a Head

I had a PPH too, and thankfully I already had an IVC in because of the epidural. It took 3 or 4 goes and two people to get it in in a non emergency setting with a good BP. I dread to think how much harder it would have been in an emergency with haemorrhagic shock. If we have a second child I will be requesting that an IVC is placed at the start of labour.

Mrs.Katt the Cat

I requested an IV be placed as soon as I was admitted for labor, even though my plan was to go meds free- I even wrote it in my birth plan that I wanted it placed ahead of time in case of emergency so they could do whatever was necessary to care for me and MiniKatt. Forgot the proper name now, but I requested the one that can be closed off and covered so you can move around or take a shower.

moto_librarian

Hep lock is what it’s called over here.

moto_librarian

I was in and out of consciousness and have no memory of the IV being run. I have small veins though, and I don’t envy the nurses. I drank Sprite throughout pushing, but I know how quickly your veins can collapse during a hemorrhage. I was lucky.

Sean Jungian

Unbelievable that someone could be so completely cavalier about their baby’s life.

PrimaryCareDoc

Unreal.

Sara Lord

As Dr. Amy knows, my daughter was born almost 22 years ago at 25 weeks and 3 days, after I spent six weeks on strict bed rest, and was hospitalized three times, including spending six days on a catheter and IV. My daughter weighed one pound ten ounces and spent three months in the NICU. Today, she is a lovely and talented young woman starting graduate school, and we owe her life entirely to the wonderful doctors who saved my pregnancy for as long as they did, and the equally wonderful doctors and nurses who cared for her in the NICU. Having lived this experience with no other goal in mind than saving the life of my child, to say that I am horrified by this story does not begin to express my feelings.

BeatriceC

I am the mother of a 24 week preemie. I am absolutely horrified. I did absolutely everything I could to keep YK in long enough for him to survive. My needs didn’t matter. It was all about him. If they wanted to hang me upside down from my ankles I would have consented. I fought hard to stay pregnant long enough to have a baby who had a fighting chance to survive. What she did. OMG, I want to punch her. I know the struggles my baby faced and the fight he went through o survive. To do *anything* that would increase the risk of having a baby that soon is beyond my comprehension. I did everything I could and it wasn’t enough. How much longer would she have made it if she had proper prenatal care? How much older would the baby have been if she followed doctor’s instructions? How much less time would that baby have suffered if that, I can’t even call her a woman because she’s some inhuman monster, had actually cared about that baby and did what she had to do to give him the best chance of life? We’ll never know, because she’s to selfish and horrible to see beyond her own needs. And how is she going to explain that to her child? “Yup, my own need for a free birth overrode your health, so I made decisions that caused you to suffer, perhaps for your entire life, because I didn’t care about you enough”. No? Well then what will she say?

Chi

As I posted on the FB page:

When I was 22 weeks pregnant with my daughter, I started having severe abdominal pain late at night, no bleeding but the pain definitely started ramping up. Did I wait 7 hours to see what would happen? No I called my PCP who told me to get my butt down to the L&D suites at my local hospital.

I was utterly TERRIFIED, from the moment I got in the car, till I was discharged. I knew that 1) At 22 weeks, my daughter’s chances of survival were slim and 2) If she stood ANY chance of surviving it would mean either a long ambulance ride or a helicopter/med-plane flight to a major hospital because our local hospital wasn’t equipped to deal with preemies below I think…30 weeks?

It turned out fortunately that I wasn’t in early labor and that my abdominal pain was a result of an e.coli infection I’d managed to pick up. So a hefty dose of antibiotics cleared that right up and no further issues (beyond usual pregnancy complications).

At NO point did I give any consideration to myself. My entire focus was on my baby and on what could be done to give her the best chance at surviving. Whatever my PCP and nurses recommended I would have done in a heartbeat.

But then, my child was never a prop for me to reinforce my crunchy cred to all the other ‘warrior mamas’.

Kelly

I remember the sheer panic and terror I felt when I rushed to the hospital because I had realized I had not felt my baby move all day. Turns out she just decided to stop moving that day and nothing I did would make her wake up. I could not imagine waiting or refusing to listen to the doctor if something was wrong. Nothing that child will do will ever make her happy.

Azuran

OMG that has to be the most outrageous, selfish, obnoxious birth story I’ve ever heard. There are no words to describe how much of a horrible mother she is.

moto_librarian

She is one of the most self-absorbed, entitled people on the planet. All she can do is bitch and moan about how cold and clinical the hospital is, yet her son would be dead were it not for their efforts. What did she expect they would do anyway? She walks in with no prenatal care in the middle of the night and expects the staff to take her at her word? She’s lucky she didn’t die too, given how much blood she had lost. The complaints about food damn near pushed me over the edge. Can you imagine how the doctors and nurses must have felt, being called to a bathroom to deal with a 24 weeker with no warning because she was more concerned about her birth than her son?

I know too many people who either can’t get pregnant or have lost babies, and seeing this ungrateful jerk infuriates me. She never shows an ounce of gratitude to the OBs and nurses who saved her life, and barely a mention of the struggles her baby faced. I hope he doesn’t have any long-term issues related to prematurity. If he ever reads this, he may have a very hard time forgiving his mother.

amazonmom

I would like to buy a round of drinks for all the staff involved in the case. A case of the primary NICU RNs favorite too. I can’t imagine they were any more pleasant to deal with in the next 4.5 months.

I keep trying to think of something else to say but I’m speechless.

corblimeybot

Exactly what I was getting ready to say. My deepest sympathies for every nurse, doctor, allied health professional, and hospital clerk who had to endure this woman, and witness this display of malice and narcissism.

BeatriceC

Pretty sure a round of drinks isn’t enough. Perhaps we could start a go fund me page to send them all on a nice Caribbean cruise.

Montserrat Blanco

That is a great idea! Count me in.

MI Dawn

We don’t know that her husband was a jerk. But I can’t imagine she was any fun to deal with. After all, BONDING and BREASTFEEDING were delayed. What do you want to bet that any problems with this child will be blamed on the Evil Medical Professionals who wouldn’t let her wear the kid 24/7 and breastfeed on demand? That baby may have even (gasp!) gotten bottles and formula!

corblimeybot

I think it’s telling that she refused to tell her husband she intended to deliver the baby without anyone there to attend the birth. She knew he would call for help. He’s probably an obnoxious person himself, but maybe he has the tiniest shred of sanity in his body.

Sean Jungian

That stuck out to me as well.

Kelly

As soon as he realized what she did, he raced to get help. I don’t know why he stays with her though.

amazonmom

I guess I’m jaded after seeing too many partners stand passively by and let the crazy partner do what they want. He may have indeed been much more of a reasonable person that she seems to be. Unfortunately I’ve seen so many relationships come apart when the child does poorly after situations like this. Sometimes I think I need formal counseling training so I can do more to help besides letting people cry on my shoulder in the NICU.

Amy Tuteur, MD

Dr. Amy Tuteur is an obstetrician gynecologist. She received her undergraduate degree from Harvard College in 1979 and her medical degree from Boston University School of Medicine in 1984. Dr. Tuteur is a former clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School. She left the practice of medicine to raise her four children. Her book, Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting (HarperCollins) was published in 2016. She can be reached at DrAmy5 at aol dot com...
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